Turks and Caicos

Coccoloba uvifera

Clusters of purple fruit hang over the ironshore, tasting of brine and grape skins. Belongers eat them off the bunch, cook them into jam, and let iguanas finish what the tide does not take.

Annona squamosa

For generations this was the islands' main backyard sweet: a knobbly green globe that splits into custard segments around black seeds. It still fruits in settlement yards on Middle Caicos and Providenciales when little else will.

Citrus x aurantiifolia

Small, thin-skinned, and fiercely aromatic, these limes are the soul of switcha. Trees lean over kitchen gardens and roadside fences, fruiting through the heat that would wither sweeter citrus.

Tamarindus indica

Brittle brown pods crack to a sour-sweet pulp that children suck on the walk home. The trees throw deep shade over old settlements and flavour sauces, sweets, and cooling drinks.

Carica papaya

Pawpaw rises on a single trunk in yards from Grand Turk to South Caicos, the orange flesh eaten at breakfast or stewed green as a savoury. It is one of the few fruits that shrugs off the islands' drought.

Chrysobalanus icaco

A coastal shrub of the dunes, bearing white-to-purple fruit with a cottony, faintly sweet flesh around a large stone. It holds sand in place and feeds both people and the rock iguana.

Melicoccus bijugatus

Green-skinned and sold in bunches, kenep hides a slick, tart pulp around a big seed. Crack it with your teeth, talk while you work the fruit free, and spit the seed toward the nearest fence.

Cocos nucifera

Palms lean over Grace Bay and the older settlements alike. Young nuts are chopped for water; mature flesh is grated into tarts, run-down sauces, and the coconut rum that marks a Turks and Caicos punch.

Mangifera indica

Mango trees are treasures on these dry cays, fruiting in a brief summer rush of stringy, resinous, sun-hot flesh. Neighbours still send a box across the fence when a tree comes in.

Annona muricata

Spiky green fruit, grown in sheltered yards, yields a creamy pulp that is tart, floral, and almost never eaten neat. Blended with a little sugar and lime, it becomes a Sunday drink.