Eat every meal with care, and enjoy a delicious life

About the author: One hand for the brush, one hand for flowers, landscape gardening major, has deeply loved plants and nature since childhood, hopes to always work in plant-related fields, in this world only beautiful flowers and delicious food cannot be let down, Weibo @One hand for the brush, one hand for flowers

If you don't like eating a certain fruit, it may be that you have never tasted its truly delicious flavor. Just like how I used to always think ginseng fruit didn't taste good. But after tasting its delightful flavor in Yunnan this time, I completely changed my view.

Yunnan's environmental conditions are richly endowed by nature, and it is a place full of surprises everywhere. The car wound along the mountain road, taking in the natural scenery all the way. In the area I passed through today, every household had bamboo strips stuck in their fields, supporting clumps of crops, and from afar you could see fruit hanging everywhere, inviting people to taste. Some roadside stalls had been set up, piled with round fruits like golden eggs, with large signs standing beside them, some reading "ginseng fruit," and some reading "life fruit."

Thinking back to the ginseng fruit I had eaten before, I did not remember it as very tasty, and it seemed to have a strange flavor. I had originally not planned to stop, but looking at the fruits covering the mountains and fields, I ultimately gave in to my craving. In the end I decided to stop and buy a bag of fruit. Perhaps we really are people blessed with good food.

The fruit stall was piled full of fruit, with smooth skins, some pure golden yellow with a hint of white, and some bearing purple stripes, three yuan per jin, take your pick. Right beside it was the orchard, with a guard dog tied up there too. When you walked close to take a photo, it barked straight away, wary that you might steal its family's fruit.

Bite into the fruit, and inside is golden bright flesh, with juice about to spill out. It is full of moisture and very sweet, as if you are sucking up sugar water, unexpectedly delicious, and very refreshing during a journey. So ginseng fruit can be this tasty after all! With mouthfuls of sweet fragrant juice, after finishing one, I could not resist eating another. Biting from a different direction, you can see the fruit's internal structure more clearly, a bit like... brains?

There are quite a few plants nicknamed ginseng fruit. Some are made with molds to deceive people, and there is the sapodilla, which is mistakenly called ginseng fruit, while the ginseng fruit in Flora of China is another name for silverweed cinquefoil in the Rosaceae family. But now, the commonly seen ginseng fruit on the market, which is what I saw today, is an annual herbaceous plant in the Solanaceae family, Solanum genus, native to South America, with the Chinese name pepino (Solanum muricatum), and it was only in recent years that it came to be called ginseng fruit.

Look at its flower, and you immediately know it is in the Solanaceae family[1]

This is sapodilla, also called ginseng fruit

Pepino leaves are alternate and have fuzz, and the fruit has the yellow of melon and the purple of eggplant. After eating several, I still could not tell whether the solid-colored ones tasted better or the ones with more purple stripes were more delicious. In any case, every one of them was dripping with sweetness.

Ginseng fruit is sweet, fragrant, and juicy, and rich in nutrients. What was laid out at the fruit stall were fruits picked the night before. If picked and eaten on the spot, they would certainly be even fresher and tastier. Fortunately I gave in to my craving, so I did not miss out.

Ginseng fruit still hanging on the plant

Ginseng fruit has a delicious life, and I have a delicious life.

[1] By I, Michael w

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Author: One hand for the brush, one hand for flowers

Images: One hand for the brush, one hand for flowers, Jiang Mouren, internet cited images, open-license images

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