Wild fruit: the human-face fruit looks like a human face, takes 10 years to bear fruit, and can stimulate the appetite and sober you up

China has a vast territory and is home to many highly distinctive plants. In the Guangdong region, there is a tree that looks quite ordinary and is often planted along roadsides, but once it bears fruit, it attracts many people who come to pick it. This is because this tree rarely bears fruit; it generally takes about 10 years to do so. Its fruit is sweet and sour and tasty, and it can be eaten not only as a fruit but also used as medicine. In Guangdong, this tree is called the "human-face tree."

The reason the human-face tree is called by this name has to do with its fruit. When its fruit is unripe, it looks much like a walnut; once ripe, its stone bears five "eyes" of different sizes, making it look like a human face, which is why its fruit is also called the "human-face fruit." Because the stone of the human-face fruit is so unusual in appearance, it is also often used to make bodhi beads, known as ghost-eye bodhi, and has a certain value for collecting and ornamentation.

The human-face fruit is a highly valued wild fruit in Guangdong, Guangxi and other places. Its flesh can stimulate the appetite and sober you up, and it also has the effect of cooling the blood and detoxifying. When the weather is hot locally, eating a few human-face fruits can help prevent internal heat, and it provides good relief for sore throat and swollen, painful throat. Local farmers often use human-face fruits to make preserved fruits and candied fruits, and also use them to make salted vegetables; when used to cook roast goose and roast duck, the flavor is extremely delicious.

But the human-face fruit is rather hard to come by. Even though the tree looks very lush, out of 10 trees, you are lucky if even one bears fruit. Even after waiting 10 years, it still may not bear fruit. Some human-face trees grow for more than ten years without even flowering, leaving people gazing in eager anticipation. But once it does set fruit, you are in for a treat, because it is high-yielding and will bear fruit every year thereafter. Local people regard these fruit-bearing human-face trees as very important and plant them widely.

For someone living in the north, this human-face tree is quite intriguing. Dear readers, have you ever seen a human-face tree?