Annona squamosa – (Custard Apple)

Description

Custard apple fruit is fleshy, sweet, aromatic, sweet and slightly acidic in taste and is used in a variety of food items throughout the world. Custard apple is a small, fast growing, and semi-deciduous evergreen tree, briefly deciduous. The compound fruit is sub globose, heart shaped, ovate or conical, 5–10 cm (2.0–3.9 in) in diameter and 6–10 cm (2.4–3.9 in) long, weighing on the average 100–240 g (3.5–8.5 oz.), but the largest fruits may reach 5 pounds in weight. Fruit is normally greenish-yellow (or pinkish- purple in a purplish cultivar) when ripe. The skin is thin but tough, may be smooth with fingerprint-like markings or covered with conical or rounded protuberances. The sweet, juicy, creamy white colored flesh is melting, sub acid and very fragrant. The fruit is of a primitive form with spirally arranged carpels, resembling a raspberry. Each segment of flesh surrounds blackish or dark brown seed, ellipsoid to obovoid, 1–1.4 cm, shiny and smooth. The fruit size is generally proportional to the number of seeds within.