Hey Kids! Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
There are so many beautiful (and delicious) fruits in season at this time of year – in this bumper edition of the Waranga News we are taking a look at Fruit Salad ingredients.
A blueberry is a berry; a very small fruit. It grows in a type of woody plant called a shrub. Many types of blueberries grow in North America and eastern Asia.
Blueberries have a sweet taste, with a little acidic hint. Wild blueberries have a stronger taste. Blueberries are good for making jelly, jam, pies, muffins and many other foods. The most widely cultivated species of blueberry is Vaccinium corymbosum. Some similar kinds of berries are called blueberry or huckleberry in different places.
A cherry is a fruit that grows on a tree or a bush. It belongs to the genus Prunus. It is red in colour, with a seed in the middle. It tastes slightly sour and is often used to flavour cakes and ice cream, or is baked in a pie or cobbler. Cherries are also a good source of Vitamin B.
Kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa) is a fruit. It has an oval shape. It is green on the inside with small black seeds that can be eaten. The kiwi has furry brown skin that is edible but is usually removed. The skin is relatively thin.
The kiwi is native to South China and China produced 50% of the world total of kiwifruit in 2017.
The fruit was named in 1959 after the kiwi, a bird and the symbol of New Zealand. Before that, its English name was Chinese gooseberry.
The kiwifruit is healthy and contains many vitamins and minerals. Kiwis are rich in vitamin C, vitamin K, potassium, and fibre. Kiwis have more vitamin C than an equivalent amount of orange.
The fruit of a strawberry (Fragoria ananassa) is rose when ripe, and has edible seeds on the outside. Many people eat strawberries on ice cream or dip them in sugar. Strawberries are rich in vitamin C and manganese. Many strawberries are grown on strawberry farms and the farmers often have hives of bees that live on the farm to pollinate the strawberries. Strawberries are technically aggregate fruits, containing more than one fruit. Strawberry stems are called runners. They grow above ground. They are a type of stolon. Seeds (the achenes) are the true fruit.
A raspberry is an aggregate fruit, meaning it has many parts joined together. It is similar to a blackberry but the fruit is hollow on the inside. There are many different species of raspberry plants, but only a few of them have fruit that are sold in grocers. Leaves of the raspberry plant are also used fresh or dried in herbal teas. The raspberry is red when ripe, and is also a source of nectar for juices.
The blackberry is an edible fruit made by any of several species in the Rubusgenus of the Rosaceae family. The blackberry shrub is called “bramble” in Britain, but in the western U.S. “caneberry” is the term used for both blackberries and raspberries.
It is a widespread and well known group of over 375 species which reproduce by apomixis. They are native all over the temperate northern hemisphere and South America. The blackberry grows to about 3 m in height. It makes an edible black fruit known by the same name. The plant tolerates poor soil very well.
Grapes are the fruit of a woody grape vine. Grapes can be eaten raw, or used for making wine, juice, and jelly/jam. Grapes come in different colours; red, purple, white and green are some examples. Today, grapes can be seedless, by using machines to pit the fruit. Wild grapevines are often considered a nuisance weed, as they cover other plants with their usually rather aggressive growth.
A plum is a sweet fruit that grows on a plum tree. The scientific name for the tree is Prunus domestica. When the fruit is dried, it is called a prune. The color “plum” takes its name from the fruit.
Prunus domestica is the European plum. Most of the plums we eat are grown on varieties of this tree. Greengages and damsons are varieties of plum.
The peach (Prunus persica) is a deciduous tree native to the region of Northwest China between the Tarim Basin and the north slopes of the Kunlun Mountains, where it was first domesticated and cultivated. It bears an edible juicy fruit called a peach or a nectarine.
The specific name persica refers to its widespread cultivation in Persia (modern-day Iran), from where it was transplanted to Europe. It belongs to the genus Prunus which includes the cherry, apricot, almond and plum, in the rose family. The peach is classified with the almond in the subgenus Amygdalus, distinguished from the other subgenera by the corrugated seed shell. Due to their close relatedness, the inside of a peach stone tastes remarkably similar to almond, and peach stones are often used to make a cheap version of marzipan, known as persipan.
The pineapple was brought to northern Europe by the Dutch from their colony in Surinam. The first pineapple to be successfully cultivated in Europe, is said to have been grown by Pieter de la Court at Meerburg in 1658.
A banana is the common name for a type of fruit and also the name for the herbaceous plants that grow it. These plants belong to the genus Musa. They are native to the tropical region of southeast Asia.
It is thought that bananas were grown for food for the first time in Papua New Guinea. Today, they are cultivated in tropical regions around the world. Most banana plants are grown for their fruits, which botanically are a type of berry. Some are grown as ornamental plants, or for their fibres.
