Tamarillo

Our Tamarillo tree has some fruit ready at last. This is also something we ate in New Zealand - my Grandfather grew Tamarillo along with Feijoas and lots of other fruit in his backyard that we feasted on as children.

Binomial name : Solanum betaceum
Common name : Tree tomato or Tamarillo

The Solanum part indicates it is in the same family as tomato. Tamarillo is a Kiwi marketing name - in 1967 it was made to distinguish this fruit from the common garden variety tomato and probably comes from "Tama"
which is Maori for leadership and "Amarillo" which is Spanish for yellow.
The fruit comes in at least 2 varieties and although one is yellow, we have one that has red skin and flesh.

The tree is quick growing but it is marginal here -it seems to prefer day temps in the low to mid 20* (C)  and  no  frosts. It likes fertile, moist and well drained soil  with no water logging after heavy rain. As our temps can get up to low 30s in Summer and the soil here gets quite wet at times my tree is not the best specimen.  Indeed this is our second tree -  the first cropped heavily, with branches breaking from the weight of fruit, and then after a period of heavy rain,  the tree died.  

The internet book " Lost crops of the Incas"  has a chapter on this fruit
-pages 307-316 .  Here's the link :



http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=030904264X


If you have the opportunity to try this fruit do so, as it has good levels of Vitamin  A  and C  and some other nutrients.  Flavour is a  bit tart though - the fruit when it is properly ripe is slightly soft when gently squeezed.
To eat  cut in half and scoop out with a teaspoon.  You can eat it out in the backyard by biting off about 1/4 and then squeezing the rest into  your mouth. We don't eat the skin of this fruit.
You can  also cook it up with some sugar to sweeten it.


Tom