Aruba

Opuntia dillenii

The prickly-pear fruit of Aruba's mondi, magenta or yellow once the glochids are burned off. Tuna is eaten chilled, juiced, or turned into jam, a desert harvest in a place that looks like it should not fruit at all.

Coccoloba uvifera

Coastal trees bearing clusters of fruit that locals call druif, eaten off the bunch or fermented into a rustic wine. They are the green edge between caliche and sea.

Tamarindus indica

A tree of the dry island, dropping sour-sweet pods that become juice, sweets, and a cooling drink. Tamarinde likes Aruba's drought the way tourists like the wind.

Malpighia emarginata

Aruba's favourite wild fruit: small red cherries so full of vitamin C they pucker, picked from roadside trees whenever a car pulls over. Generations stop for shimarucu; the habit is older than the highway.

Mangifera indica

Yard trees in the more sheltered cunucu still fruit in summer, a luxury on an arid island. When a mango comes in, it is shared across the fence in a paper bag.

Carica papaya

Grown in gardens that catch a little extra water, eaten at breakfast or blended into juice. Papaya is one of the fruits that consented to Aruba's heat.

Melicoccus bijugatus

Spanish lime by another name: green skin, slick orange pulp, a seed to spit. Kenepa season is sticky fingers and talk in the shade of the tree.

Annona muricata

A textbook Papiamento word as much as a fruit: sorsaka, spiny, blended into a creamy juice. It grows where a garden can spare the water, and the flavour is the island's idea of dessert.

Passiflora edulis

Vines on fences yield markusa, wrinkled and aromatic, juiced into a tart drink that stands up to the wind. It is one of the few lush flavours on a cactus island.

Psidium guajava

Fragrant, seedy, and boiled into paste or juice in cunucu kitchens. Guyaba trees hold on in old yards, a sweet that does not need rainforest.