Pond Apple Progress

The fruit on the pond apple (Annona glabra) at the entrance to the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory is now ripe. Special thanks to Bob Montanaro for photo lighting lessons and for the old-fashioned citrus knife with which the fruit was cut open.

When ripe, the fruit are yellowish, soft to the touch and marked with brown spots. The fruit are not especially yummy to most humans, and I have heard their taste likened to turpentine. Inside each fruit are many, many seeds …


Note the hilum, the mark on the seed coat by the comer attachment to the ovary wall.