Tzapotl: One name, many fruits

I've wondered why three seemingly unrelated fruits have related names: the white sapote, black sapote, and mamey sapote.

I found out the answer earlier this month when I visited the Fairchild Botanical Garden in Miami. I was lucky to visit when they had their fruit stand open, with produce from the garden's farm in Homestead.

John Mario was running the fruit stand and he's very knowledgeable about tropical fruits. He explained the origin of the name: sapote comes from the nahuatl word tzapotl, meaning a soft edible fruit. Apparently the name has been applied to many many fruits which are not botanically related, but all originated in Mexico or Central America.

Here's a picture of a nicely ripened black sapote I bought at Fairchild:

The black sapote is related to the persimmon. You can see a bit of the resemblance in the presence of the thingy where the stem attaches to the fruit - I think it's called an involucre.

I had never eaten a black sapote before, and it was excellent. John Mario told me some people call it the chocolate pudding fruit, which makes sense. Inside the slightly stiff green skin is a soft, black flesh, slightly sweet and definitely exotic. It had a nice mild coffee aftertaste. It's worth trying, if you can find one.

A fruit with no name

This is the fruit of a plant in the genus Puya. Botanically it is distantly related to the pineapple, and with a little bit of imagination maybe you can see the resemblance.

I was introduced to this fruit by an acquaintance who told me it grows on his property in San Diego county. He was fairly certain of the genus but he didn't know what the fruit is called. I've done a bit of googling and haven't been able to figure out exactly what it is.

This fruit was almost as large as a basketball. You can break it or cut it into sections, each section containing a pithy but juicy flesh surrounding a large pit.

The flesh is edible. I ate it. It was vaguely pineapple-like, but not as acidic. The flavour was fairly bland, with hints of banana and bubble gum. It tasted similar to bland tropical fruits I've eaten. If I was hungry I would have eaten more. But the flavour was not memorable or enticing, and I'm not surprised that I've never heard of this fruit before.

Even so, after millenia of humans tasting and consuming probably everything edible under the sun you would think that somebody somewhere at sometime must have eaten and named this fruit. If you know what it is please leave a comment.