Abiu
A bright yellow Amazonian fruit with translucent jelly-like flesh and a flavor reminiscent of crème caramel — sticky white latex and all.
44 fruits containing the letter B — each with origin, classification, and notes.
Below are fruits that contain the letter B anywhere in the name. Each of the 44 fruits below opens to a full profile.
A bright yellow Amazonian fruit with translucent jelly-like flesh and a flavor reminiscent of crème caramel — sticky white latex and all.
A Japanese vine fruit with a pale-purple pod that splits open along its length when ripe, exposing translucent white-grey flesh studded with tiny black seeds — eaten as a brief seasonal delicacy.
A sacred Indian fruit tree — the bael (Bengal quince or stone apple) is one of the most revered plants in Hinduism, its trifoliate leaves used in Shiva worship; the fruit is a hard-shelled sphere the size of a large orange, with dry, orange, aromatic flesh inside that is eaten fresh or made into a beloved Indian drink; dried bael slices are a staple of traditional Ayurvedic medicine.
A tropical berry of the genus Musa, the most widely consumed fruit in the world by weight, mostly grown from a single sterile clone.
The citrus fruit that gives Earl Grey tea its distinctive floral, perfumed flavour — a sour, pear-shaped orange-yellow fruit grown almost exclusively in Calabria, southern Italy; too bitter to eat fresh, its cold-pressed rind oil is one of the most important aromatic compounds in perfumery and flavouring.
A small dark blue European wild berry — close cousin of the blueberry, but smaller, darker, more intensely flavored, and almost impossible to cultivate commercially.
A green-skinned Mexican fruit whose ripe interior turns into a thick chocolate-pudding-like brown mash — eaten with a spoon or used as a vegan chocolate substitute.
A glossy black aggregate fruit of bramble vines — fierce wild thickets across temperate regions and the most-foraged fruit in many countries, with intense sweet-tart flavor and abundant seeds.
A small intensely-flavored European berry that's a household staple in Britain and Eastern Europe but virtually unknown in the US — banned for decades to protect the timber industry.
A red-fleshed orange variety from Sicily and Spain — its dramatic red color comes from anthocyanins triggered by cold winter nights, a chemistry trick most citrus regions can't replicate.
A small, deep-blue North American berry famous for its high antioxidant content, eaten fresh or in baked goods, jams, and breakfast cereals.
A large dark purple hybrid berry created in 1920s California — half blackberry, half raspberry, with logan and dewberry mixed in — that became a Disneyland concession and Knott's Berry Farm legacy.
A large green tropical fruit with starchy white flesh that bakes to a bread-like texture — staple food across the Pacific Islands and Caribbean, the cargo that triggered the famous Mutiny on the Bounty.
A bizarre yellow citrus that splits into long finger-like segments — all peel and pith with no juice or pulp, used purely for fragrance and zest.
A rare orange-amber Arctic berry that grows in remote bogs across the boreal north — Scandinavia's most prized wild berry, with no commercial cultivation despite decades of attempts.
The wild ancestor of all cultivated apples — small, intensely sour or bitter fruits from wild and ornamental trees, generally too harsh to eat raw but exceptional for making jelly, cider, and crab apple wine; the pectin-rich juice gels easily and the flavour — honeyed, floral, and tart — is unlike any cultivated apple.
A small, intensely tart red berry of North American wetlands — turned into Thanksgiving sauce by colonial Americans and into urinary-tract-infection folklore by mid-20th-century medicine.
A small dark purple-black berry from the elder shrub, eaten cooked into syrups, wines, and preserves — toxic when raw, beloved when properly prepared.
A small translucent green or red berry — once Britain's favorite hedgerow fruit, the subject of competitive gooseberry-growing societies, and the base of classic English fool desserts.
A long blue Siberian honeysuckle berry (also called haskap) that ripens before strawberries, survives -40°F winters, and tastes like a blueberry-raspberry-blackberry hybrid.
A wild dark berry of the western North American mountains — beloved by hikers, hunted by bears, and impossible to cultivate, sustaining a regional Pacific Northwest jam-and-pie economy.
A small bright orange African fruit related to the mangosteen, with a thin skin enclosing tart-sweet juicy flesh — eaten fresh or fermented into a drink.
A Brazilian wonder fruit that grows directly on the trunk and branches of its tree — dark purple berries that look like grapes glued onto bark, with mild grape-lychee flavor and a brief shelf life.
A purple-black Indian summer fruit (also called jamun, java plum) with bright purple juice that stains everything — a beloved street snack and a classic Ayurvedic remedy for diabetes.
A 1970s German hybrid combining blackcurrant and gooseberry — thornless, vigorous, productive, and almost unknown commercially despite decades of championing by horticulture writers.
A small Asian fruit (also called Chinese date or red date) that turns from apple-crisp green to wrinkled-skinned brown-red as it dries — eaten fresh, dried, or simmered in tonics.
Not actually a berry but the female cone of the juniper tree — a small dark blue spice used for centuries to flavor gin, game meats, and northern European preserves.
A small, tart red berry of the boreal forests of Scandinavia, North America, and Russia — similar in appearance to cranberry but smaller and sharper; the essential condiment of Swedish cuisine, served with meatballs, game, and pancakes.
A 19th-century California garden hybrid — half blackberry, half raspberry, dark red, intensely flavored, and the historical ancestor of modern boysenberries and tayberries.
A small dark Patagonian berry (also called calafate) — Tierra del Fuego's iconic fruit, with a folk legend that whoever eats one will return to Patagonia.
An Oregon-bred blackberry hybrid, named for Marion County — the defining berry of Pacific Northwest pies, jams, and ice cream, prized for its complex sweet-tart flavor.
A long, blackberry-like fruit grown across temperate regions of the world — often available free from neighborhood trees, vital for silkworms, and beloved by birds.
A white strawberry with red seeds and intense pineapple-vanilla flavor — a re-bred near-extinct South American wild strawberry that's become a viral specialty fruit since 2010.
A small Southeast Asian fruit with a fluorescent red shell covered in soft pliable spines, opening to reveal lychee-like translucent flesh — visually startling, mild and sweet to eat.
A small, intensely-flavored aggregate fruit of a thorny rose-family bramble, eaten fresh or cooked into preserves, sauces, and brandy.
The vegetable that acts like a fruit — rhubarb's bright red-green stalks are so acidic they cannot be eaten without sugar, but when cooked with sugar they produce a tart, uniquely flavoured ingredient for pies, crumbles, and jam; forced Yorkshire rhubarb, grown in dark sheds, is a protected food with a distinctive pale pink colour and more delicate flavour.
A bright orange-pink Pacific Northwest forest raspberry — eaten fresh by hikers, cooked traditionally by Coast Salish peoples, a key indicator of healthy temperate rainforest ecology.
A thorny coastal shrub producing dense clusters of tiny bright orange berries — extraordinarily rich in vitamin C (ten times more than oranges), omega-7 fatty acids, and carotenoids; the astringent, intensely sour berries are too sharp to eat raw but make vivid orange juice, jams, and syrups popular across Northern Europe and Russia.
North America's versatile wild fruit — small, blueberry-sized purple-red berries from the Amelanchier shrub/tree, with a sweet, almond-flavoured flesh beloved by birds and foragers; also called Juneberry, Saskatoon, or Shadbush.
A small red aggregate fruit with seeds on the outside, a hybrid that emerged in 18th-century France from a chance crossing of North and South American species.
A 1970s Scottish blackberry-raspberry hybrid named for the river Tay — long sweet-tart wine-red fruit with intense flavor, popular in home gardens but virtually absent from supermarkets.
Japanese salt-pickled sour plums — not actually a plum but a pickled ume apricot, intensely sour and salty, eaten as a rice accompaniment, used as a natural preservative, and believed in Japan to cure everything from hangovers to bacterial infections.
Also called yangmei or Chinese bayberry — a knobbly red or purple fruit native to East Asia with sweet-tart flavor, high antioxidant content, and a brief, fragile fresh season.
Botanically a fruit (a *pepo* berry) though treated culinarily as a vegetable, the zucchini is the most-grown summer squash and a green-skinned, tender-fleshed kitchen workhorse.
Try fruits that start with B, or end with B. Or browse the full fruits index.