Curated playlist
Fruit trees
- CherryCherry is one of those fruits so ordinary it almost disappears into the background of daily life. A bowl at a summer picnic, a garnish on a cocktail, blossoms photographed every April in parks around the world. Yet the cherry carries a…
- PeachThe peach, Prunus persica, carries a name that points to Persia, yet every thread of its origin leads back to China. That mismatch between name and birthplace is just the beginning of a story that stretches from Neolithic riverbanks to…
- GrapefruitGrapefruit carries a name that has puzzled people for centuries. A fruit that looks nothing like a grape earned that label sometime in the early 19th century, and nobody can quite agree on why. In 1814, the British naturalist John Lunan…
- WalnutWalnuts occupy a strange botanical category: they look like drupes, they act like drupes, but they are not drupes. The outer covering of the walnut fruit is technically an involucre rather than a morphological part of the carpel, which…
- LemonThe lemon, known to botanists as Citrus x limon, is a hybrid fruit that has travelled from the foothills of northwestern India to nearly every kitchen, garden, and painting studio on earth. Its juice measures at 5-6% citric acid, which is…
- AlmondEach February, more than 1 million beehives are loaded onto trucks and driven across the United States to a single crop in California. That is nearly half of all the beehives in the country, summoned for one task. The crop is the almond,…
- CoconutCoconut, Cocos nucifera, may be the single plant most responsible for human civilizations reaching distant shores. The Austronesian peoples who crossed open ocean to settle half the world brought this palm with them as a living supply…
- Mandarin orangeThe mandarin orange is heavy for its size, firm to slightly soft, and its pebbly skin slips away in a single thin piece. There is almost no white pith underneath, so the segments fall apart in your hand. Botanists call it Citrus…
- AvocadoThe avocado is an evergreen tree of the laurel family, and its fruit is botanically a large berry built around a single oversized seed. Some researchers believe that seed was once meant for a stomach that no longer exists. The animals…
- Juglans regiaJuglans regia goes by many names: common walnut, English walnut, Persian walnut. None of them quite captures what this tree actually is. Its Latin name translates as "Jupiter's royal acorn," a title bestowed by the Romans who spread it…