Tamarillo

That tamarillos are brazenly beautiful most will agree: satin-skinned as eggplants (a family member), glossy scarlet or golden yellow, they are as perfectly formed as eggs (but pointier). The fruit sports an elegant stem, and is equally stunning within—lush, deep apricot flesh with two purple whorls of seeds. Most would concur that the aroma is unusual and attractive. That the flavor is what you might expect from the other characteristics? Well . . .

Such hesitation is unlikely in a good part of the rest of the world. Although probably native to the Peruvian Andes and parts of Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia, the tree tomato is so popular that the small, fast-growing evergreen is now cultivated all over South and Central America, in Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Haiti, southern Asia, the East Indies, New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand—from whence comes the majority of our fruit. (A small crop is growing in California.) And the plant is wellloved in even more places as a generously flowering, sweet-scented ornamental for garden or pot.