the.com/sugar apple
a knobbly green hand grenade that detonates into custard when you pry it open
means A sweet, knobbly green tropical fruit (Annona squamosa) whose lumpy segments pull apart to reveal soft, fragrant white flesh studded with black seeds.
from The name is plain English doing its honest work: 'sugar' for the custardy sweetness, 'apple' because Europeans encountering unfamiliar New World fruits reached, as they so often did, for 'apple' to mean 'roundish edible thing.' The plant is native to the tropical Americas and is a close cousin of the cherimoya and soursop, all members of the custard-apple family (Annonaceae) — and 'custard apple' is indeed another common name for it. Its botanical species name, squamosa, is Latin for 'scaly,' a nod to the overlapping bumps of that grenade-like skin.
- alias
- called custard apple or sweetsop worldwide
- eat by hand
- flesh scoops out in soft creamy segments
- seed warning
- black seeds are toxic if crushed
- ancient
- depicted in Mayan and Indian art for centuries
- family
- cousin of the cherimoya and soursop
annona squamosa — tropical fruit tree native to south america and caribbean, now widely cultivated in india, thailand, and philippines