fruit · The Trophy Room
Cannonball Fruit
Exactly what it looks like — a rusty-brown cannonball, and there are dozens of them growing straight out of the trunk on woody, snaking stalks. The cannonball tree is a jungle spectacle: extravagant flowers, trunk-borne fruit that thuds to the ground, and a foul-smelling pulp inside that almost nobody eats.
Identifying
- large, hard, rusty-brown spherical fruits, cannonball-sized, growing directly on the trunk
- borne on tangled woody flower stalks off the main trunk (cauliflory), not the branch tips
- big oval leaves clustered at branch ends; showy pink-and-orange flowers lower down
- inside, a soft pulp that oxidizes blue-green and smells strongly unpleasant
Facts
- planted at temples across South and Southeast Asia, where its flower is considered sacred
- the fruit is technically edible but the reeking pulp means it's fed to animals, not people
- when a ripe cannonball drops, the impact and the smell make it unmistakable
Field Kitchen status
No recipe: cannonball fruit is not treated as an edible fruit.
