For centuries, the British have been engaged in an intricate network of international exchange that spans all corners of our spherical planet. Upon colonizing a new land, they would promptly develop a special trade relationship with its inhabitants in the customary European fashion; giving them smallpox, Christianity, and plenty of rewarding forced labor in exchange for their lives and any resources worth plundering. Since Jamaica was a major British port in the tropics, hundreds of varieties of plants and animals were introduced, often with mixed results.

I’m far too lazy to discuss ALL the wonderful things I’ve seen growing on trees here, so I’m limiting this dissertation to whatever is growing on my land at the moment. My absolute favorite is the otaheiti apple. This is my tree behind my house. Of course, the fruit bears about 30 feet up and the tree sits precariously on a hillside sloping down about 50 feet at an insane angle. To harvest otaheities, I have to utilize ancient Jamaican technology taught to me by a wise elder, in the form of a long-ass stick of bamboo to knock the little bastards down the gully and then go pick through the ones that the birds haven’t mangled. The otaheiti is about the size of your average pear. The skin has a perfumed scent, like a rose, and despite having the appearance of a morbidly-infected hemorrhoid, it has a pleasant taste, being most akin to that of a white grape. The flesh is puffy but juicy when chewed. The pit is about the size of a ping pong ball, and comes out easily, allowing one to consume multiple otaheities with minimal mess. See the picture below for further detail. Since it’s not pulsating flesh, Athena is ambivalent to the bounty set before her. Picky bitch.

Behold! Limes! Limes are very popular around here, usually taking on the roles of lemons in many recipes. I juice them and mix them with various flavors of syrup to create tasty, tooth-rotting concoctions. There’s a lime tree growing down the gully that I often plunder to evade scurvy for another day. My lime tree is slightly different from the others in the neighborhood because it utilizes a secret ingredient: dead people. The tree grows beside the graves of the ancestors buried in my backyard, and I must say that you can definitely taste the difference between normal limes and my superior corpse limes.

This beauty is known as a soursop, and it’s as delicious as it looks. It’s a tough fruit that’s typically juiced, since trying to eat one is like biting into a pinecone. The juice is usually mixed with milk and tastes like a mix of strawberry and pineapple. In addition to being rich in vitamin C, B1, and B2, the soursop’s leaves can be boiled as a tea that helps induce sleep. All of my attempts to harvest and utilize this bastard have failed miserably, so I usually just give the fruit away, opting to buy the juice at the store instead.

This monstrosity is by far one of my favorite delicacies to serve to my guests, since I get to chop the sonofabitch with my trusty machete. The Mayans called it cacahuatl, the Spanish called it cacao, but you know it as chocolate.

Cacao was serious business in the Rio Pedro Valley in the fifties and sixties, but the price of it collapsed and the industry tanked. As a result, cacao grows wild on every hill and gully, and some of the old timers still harvest it and produce homemade chocolate. A popular drink around here is milo, which is boiled raw chocolate and cinnamon leaves infused with a pound of cane sugar. As such, milo is the cure for everything. The cacao fruit can be enjoyed right off the tree too, just chop it open and feast on the tangy pulp that clings to the cocoa beans. It’s a great snack food for wasting time.

In addition to these exotic gems I harvest bananas and plantains from my yard regularly, and the mangoes will be ripening soon. After them come grapefruits and tangerines, provided they aren’t all stolen by schoolchildren since the trees sit so close to the road. There’s also a papaya tree down the gully that occasionally grants me an edible fruit that hasn’t been ravaged by the birds. In all, the wide varieties of fructose around here constitute one of the many pleasures of Jamaican life. It’s a testament to the agreeable climate and the untold potential of the soil.