Saturday, July 15, 2006
Unidentified fruit
This one stumps Helmut. Any answers?
UPDATE:
MT, always on the ball, has tracked down two candidates: the potato tree and the sausage tree. I thought at first it might be the fruit of a sausage tree. I had seen these in East Africa and was told a local beer is made from them. But I remember them as more elongated. The potato tree, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have a lot of info out there. The photos MT has found look similar to sausage tree fruit. They both look roughly like the photo above. I know, I know,... we're blinding you with science. Science!
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12 comments:
I'm guessing very ugly gourds.
I googled my heart out and I'm stumped too. It's like cannonball fruit a little, but cannonball fruit is sui generis taxonomically. You know there's something called a "potato tree"? I was sure that had to be a folk name but some botanist named it that for being a related nightshade. Stupid scientists. Stupid Web. Stupid helmut for doing this to me. Damn fruit!
I don't know how to google a photo. I did not know about the potato tree. Cool.
This might be the fruit of a tree that grows in arid east Africa called, by locals, "sausage tree." They told me that locals sometimes make a kind of beer out of it. But I thought they looked longer and more slender than these fine specimens of whateverness.
C'est voila. Or voila. Why am I so good to you after what you've done to my self esteem?
Update/Lateraldate: It seems a keyword capturing "like cannon ball fruit" may be "cauliflorous".
After looking at several photos, the ones here and here makes me think "sausage tree" is right.
Damn, MT, that's some sleuthing. I wonder if they're the same thing. It's unclear from the photos you've tracked down because I can't find a way to compare leaves. But googling the two together doesn't yield anything either. Let's go with sausage tree.
By this I'm willing to say the leaves too look alike. Plant identification often comes down to the flowers, which largely determine who mates with whom plantwise. Here's some sausage tree science and a photo of a flower and leaves. Phew. Since we have just that one view of the mystery plant, I view this mystery as solved as it can be.
MT, you just introduced me to the illogical concept of "sausage fruit" and now you say your work here is done?
How the [bleep] am I supposed to get to sleep tonight knowing I live on the same planet as "sausage fruit"?
Hey, blame helmut. He was the one unconsciously thinking of sausage all along. Freud said a cigar is just a cigar sometimes, but a "sausage" for helmut evidently is not just about sausage. Note also our metaphorical proximity to the "forbidden fruit" and "tree of knowledge." Yes, I'd say helmut is definitely who you ought to be talking to.
Sausage tree fruit is used to make beer. Beer goes well with sausage. It is the Tree of Self-Referentiality.
So where, pray tell, does one find sausage fruit beer?
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