#fruit poll

Australian Blood Lime

(citrus australasica, var. sanguinea x citrus reticulata 'Ellendale' or citrus x sykesii)

Also known as red centre lime

The Australian blood lime is a hybrid citrus between the red native fingerlime and an Ellendale mandarin (which itself is a hybrid between the sweet orange and a mandarin) and was developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), an Australian government agency, as part of a program on biosalinity and halotolerance (how well crops do in saltier soil) and to address the small yields and fruits of wild trees. Dr Steve Sykes crossed native citrus with modern cultivars, eventually developing what have become the Australian Sunrise limes, which are three distinct varieties:

Australian Blood lime, this variety, a hybrid between red native fingerlime and Ellendale mandarin. Its rind as well as its flesh and juice are distinctively red.

Australian Sunrise lime, a hybrid between red native fingerlime and calamondin (which itself is a hybrid between a kumquat and a mandarin), which is more pear-shaped and is often used to make marmalade.

Australian Outback lime or Australian Desert lime, which was developed from a collection of different native desert lime trees. The fruits stay fairly small, but they're quite juicy and used in sauces.

The CSIRO program was quite succesful as the newly developed varieties are high-yielding with larger than normal fruit and consistent yields.

Limelon

(cucumis melo, var. 'Limelon')

This is one I only discovered and had recently! It's a melon variety that was created in 2017 by the Known-You Seed Company in Taiwan through natural hybridization. By picking the more sour specimens throughout the process, they managed to cultivate a sweet melon with lemon/lime-like sour notes, hence its name. In 2017 they perfected the flavour and scaled up cultivation to include Italy, Spain and The Netherlands and by 2020 it had expanded to Morocco, Costa Rica and Honduras. It's possibly the best melon I've had, which isn't saying much considering I'm not the biggest melon fan, but it is REALLY good!

Whump poll!

Krasang

(feroniella lucida)

Also known as kasang, kawista-krikil, kawista batu, ma sang or cần thăng

Krasang is a source of confusion for botanists. It was initially placed in the feronia genus, which was originally established for wood apples by Walter Tennyson Swingle. Then wood apples became part of limonia (an even more ambiguous genus) and krasang was moved to the feroniella genus. Other species, feroniella oblata and feroniella pubescens, did exist but the former is considered a variety of feroniella lucida and the latter became harrisonia perforata or khontaa, leaving feroniella lucida as the sole species in the genus. Then to top things off, there's various sources that place krasang in the citrus genus as citrus lucida, likely due to it sharing characteristics with species in the citreae tribe and the fact that citrus could be grafted to feronia, which led Swingle to believe that feronia had a close relationship to true citrus, though recent phylogenetic studies have retained feroniella as a distinct genus more closely related to limonia than citrus.

The fruits look like small oranges and ripen around October, trading their green colour for a reddish brown. The skin, which is claimed to have medicinal uses, is hard and thick and the yellowish orange flesh is filled with pink seeds. I couldn't find a whole lot of information on its flavour, but considering it's a possible relative to citrus, I'd imagine it to be quite tart and sour. The fact that it's used in the Cambodian and Thai kitchen to add a tangy flavour to soups would confirm that, but flavour seems to be variety dependent, with some being on the sweeter side and others leaning towards a more sour and even acidic flavour.

raw

cooked

both equally

neither equally

i've never had a fruit in my life

Bladdernut

(diospyros whyteana)

Also known as swartbas, wild coffee or umTenatane

Not to be confused with hard-leaved monkey plum (diospyros scabrida, var. cordata), coastal bladdernut (diospyros scabrida, var. scabrida) or species of the staphylea genus, which are also called bladdernuts

Family of the persimmon and found in the Afromontane forests as well as on rocky mountain slopes, the bladdernut is often confused with a few of its siblings, most notably the monkey plum (diospyros scabrida var. cordata) and the coastal bladdernut (diospyros scabrida) with the main differences being the shape of its leaves and flowers. The dense, drought-resistant shrub of diospyros whyteana grows sweet scented flowers and makes for great hedges, but they're also used as accent plants in gardens and even as bonsai. The fruits, however, aren't much to write home about. The berries, which are encased in a papery calyx similar to that of a cape gooseberry (physalis peruviana), are edible but they're also very bitter. Its seeds are seen as more useful and they're often roasted to make a coffee substitute.

Pitanak

(dracontomelon costatum)

Also known as besengkiang

Pitanak is a fairly unknown relative of the Indochina dragon plum (dracontomelon duperraneum) and can be found growing along rivers in Southeast Asia, specifically Malaysia and Indonesia. The epithet "costatum" means "ribbed" in Latin and refers to the veins in its leaves. It's not cultivated, but fruits are often harvested from the wild when they're ripe, indicated by their reddish purple colour. Pitanak is juicy, sweet and generally eaten out of hand but also candied for use in desserts or used to add sour notes to cooked dishes.