I inform you of that fact because I know that the title of this post is a bit extreme. It was that magazine that really caused me to get carried away.
My title for today's post was first written as, The Loquat. Simple and unadorned. It's really quite a modest little fruit after all. Then, I must have suffered a flashback to my Reader's Digest days, and thought that loquacious would be the perfect 'adjective', a word naming an attribute of a noun, for loquat. It even kind of looks like it, right? The fact that 'loquacious' means one who is excessively talkative stopped me for a moment, but then I considered. Look at how excessively fruited that tree is. People are loquacious when they talk too much and that loquat tree, not given to talking at all of course, in my opinion can be considered loquacious when it demonstrates unrestrained fruiting. You have to admit it. Look down there at the first two pictures. That tree just kept going on, and on, and on, once it started fruiting. You couldn't turn the darn thing off.
A fine looking tree.
I'd call that 'prolific,' producing much fruit or foliage, wouldn't you? Then 'bodaceous', meaning excellent, admirable, attractive, came to mind for the title because it rhymes and does describe the tree, and 'rosaceous' popped up because the locquat is scientifically classed as a member of the family Rosaceae. I couldn't possibly not use such an obvious choice. And it rhymes besides! How often does such a good word come along?
So, now you understand why an over-the-top title for a really simple topic assaulted you when you clicked on this blog today. That's just the way it happened, and you'll just have to try to put it behind you as I tell you about how I 'discovered' this 'new' fruit.
For the past seven years, I've been walking past a tree in a yard along Sturges Road. Early on I noticed that it would bear lots of little yellow fruit in early spring. Someone, when I asked them about this tree, said they thought it was poisonous. That put me off of course, but I couldn't help wish, since the tree produced such an abundant crop, that the fruit was in fact, edible.
Turns out that it is. I finally picked one of the fruits a few days ago, did a bunch of research on line and discovered that it was almost certainly, a loquat.
This morning, Oct. 18, 2019, I stopped at the tree's house and asked the guy who answered the door if the tree in his yard was a loquat. He verified that it was. I then asked him, pulling out a $10 bill to prove my worth, if he would allow me to pick some of them. He said, "Come with me."
He showed me how to judge the ripeness of the fruit and pointed out that only a few had begun to show ripeness. We each sampled a few and although I thought even those that were not fully ripe tasted pretty good, he insisted that only ripe ones were acceptable for picking. He told me to come back in a few days and come up to the house. "We'll see how they look," he said.
Well, he's the boss. He seems to want to control the picking of his tree, which certainly makes sense. The thing is, I've never noticed that he ever harvested his tree in the past. That was one reason why I thought that it may very well be poisonous. I watched the birds gobbling most of the fruit, but that's no indication that humans can do the same.
I read that loquats are not likely to be found in any store. They 'oxidize,' combine chemically with oxygen, so they turn brown and look less appealing almost as quickly as they're cut.
The skins are tough, the seeds are large and it has some internal 'membranes' a thin layer of tissue acting as a partition as well, so there's not a lot to eat in each of them. A little bit of pulp. The juice though is plentiful, mildly tart and pleasant. The encyclopedia says it tastes like mangoes. Maybe, a little.
(I cut the one on the right first and the one of the left immediately afterwards. I then picked up my camera. You can see the brown already well started on the both sections of the one on the right and a hint of brown on the bottom section of the one on the left. That's really fast oxidizing) I stopped by his house twice during the next week and was disappointed. He wasn't home. Third time lucky they say though, and it proved to be accurate in my case as well. I stopped by at about 10 a.m. yesterday morning (10/24/19) and he looked like he had just rolled out of bed when he answered the door. He didn't want to come outside this time. He just pointed me toward the tree and said, "help yourself." He also asked me if I'd like a seedling. I sure would. Today, 10/25, I picked it up after shopping. What a great guy.
This is the fruit I picked. The skins look pretty beat up, but that didn't appear to affect the fruit inside. I think it's that oxidation thing going on, even on the skin.
And it's not too surprising that the juice is brown.
The juice I made reminds me a little of pear nectar, both in texture and flavor. I had picked some dead ripe ones and mixed in some less ripe as well so that I'd have a range of tartness. The juice does not remind me at all of mangoes. I saw various videos on Youtube that suggested adding lemon juice, water, sugar and salt to the loquat juice. I added nothing at all and think it is very drinkable just as it is.
Loquat seedling.
Eaten fresh, these are not the most delicious things ever. And they take some work to make the juice. The seeds, which have toxins in them, must be taken out before processing and that is time consuming. I think that it would be nice to keep the tree I grow on the small side. Prune it heavily so we don't have bushels of these things to deal with. I'd like just a bit of juice each spring... I just read about growing them in containers. That might be the way to go.
Well, that does it for this post. I hope you enjoyed it. Maybe it got a little long. You might have preferred the 'condensed,' made more concise, version, but you know, it pays to increase your word power.
My family knows that one of my favourite forms of poetry is the limerick. Here's one about my new fruit, the loquat.
Don't think it was poison, sure hope not.
It was little and yellow,
Tasted tart but was mellow,
I liked it yes but, not a whole lot. -djf
