What’s That Fruit ? ? ?

It’s always an adventure to go to the Saturday Market in San Ignacio or the fruit stands on the streets,  to see what fruits have rotated into season. This post will help you know when you can find certain things (for instance, don’t plan on making an avocado chip dip for Christmas Dinner), and a visual guide to figure out what you are seeing when something unfamiliar appears, because the produce usually isn’t labeled in the markets.

Even if you ask a vendor the name of an unfamiliar fruit, you might get the local name – and you might not know a “guanabana” is the same as soursop – which makes a marvelous cold drink on a hot day, and delicious ice cream if you have an ice cream maker.

So here are the fruits (and a few  “veggies”), and the approximate times (gleaned off the internet) that you might expect to find them in the market. The dates may be off – no guarantees – but they’ll give a general idea. Please add a comment if you have better information.

Use list to check what’s in season, and the images below the list as an ID to find out what an odd-looking fruit might be.

1. Avocado – May through October
2. Banana – Year ‘round
3. Bread fruit – June through August
4. Caimito  or Star Apple – April and May
5. Cacao – Year ‘round
6. Cashew – April through June
7. Coconut – Year ‘round
8. Coffee – spring and summer
9. Custard apple – March and April
10. Dragon Fruit – April and May
11. Flor de Jamaica (Sorrell) – January – March
12. Grapefruit – October through April
13. Granadilla – variable
14. Guava – February and March
15. Jackfruit – variable
16. Macal or Koko – year round
17. Mamey – April through June
18. Mango – May through August
19. Pacaya – February – March
20. Papaya – Year ‘round
21. Pineapple – May and June
22. Platano  or Plantain – Year ‘round
23. Rambutan – July through September
24. Sincuya – same as Soursop, to which it is related
25. Sapodilla – February and March
26. Soursop – December through February, August and September
27. Star fruit – February and June
28. Tamarind – March and April
29. Citrus: lime, tangelo, mandarin orange – November through April
30. Valencia Orange – January through June
31. Wax apple – June and July
32. Lychee – May through July
33. Ayote – May through ? (the tender unripe ayote is eaten whole, while mature ayote is hard like acorn squash)
34. Nopal – Year ’round

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Be bold! Buy one or two mystery fruits/veggies and give them a try. You might be very pleasantly surprised.

By the way, you may have already met some of these fruits in your home country supermarket, but the fresh fruit from the tropical market may be worlds better/different in taste, texture, and aroma.

Papaya is one excellent example – tangy, aromatic, and delicious when freshly picked – much tastier than the exported ones, which had to be harvested when green to survive shipping to northern markets. So especially if you have tried some of these fruits before and didn’t much like them, give the local fruits a chance to surprise and please you with their fresh-picked qualities.

Search this website to see if a fruit has its own page of description and recipes. It’s a work in progress.

BTW, these photos are from my library of images I’ve been working on for several years – I wasn’t sure why I was photographing the fruits or what I’d use the photos for but I have a passion for recording nature images so here they are!