The World of Apples

The apples that aren't

Sugar apple

Annona squamosa, Annonaceae, the custard-apple family

Nobody knows the sugar apple’s original home. In Sri Lanka “it flourishes in the wet as well as the dry zones from sea level to 3,500 ft”, and it is grown in India and Malaya2; the Maldives call it dhivehi atha5. Morton’s names for it in India are ata, sharifa, sitaphal and custard apple, and in Malaya nona and seri kaya2. Sitaphal is Sita’s fruit: Platts has “sītā-phal, ‘Sītā’s fruit’, the custard-apple, Annona squamosa”3. In French it is the pomme-cannelle, the cinnamon apple4.

It is “usually broken open and the flesh segments enjoyed while the hard seeds are separated in the mouth and spat out. It is so luscious that it is well worth the trouble.” In Malaya it is pressed through a sieve into ice cream or a milk drink, and it is never cooked. The seeds are poisonous2.

Sources

  1. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy: Annona squamosa, Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Supports: the accepted name and family.
  2. Sugar Apple, in Fruits of Warm Climates, Julia F. Morton, 1987, Purdue University NewCROP. Supports: the range, the names, how the fruit is eaten, and the poisonous seeds.
  3. A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English, entry sītā, J. T. Platts, 1884, Digital Dictionaries of South Asia. Supports: sītā-phal as Sita's fruit, the custard apple.
  4. pomme, Larousse, Dictionnaire de français. Supports: pomme-cannelle as the fruit of a species of Annona.
  5. English-Maldives Dhivehi dictionary, Two Thousand Isles, 2017. Supports: the Dhivehi name.