African Cherry Orange
A small, thick-skinned wild African citrus with intensely fragrant peel and tart pulp — used more for marmalade and traditional medicine than fresh eating.
69 fruits containing the letter N — each with origin, classification, and notes.
Below are fruits that contain the letter N anywhere in the name. Each of the 69 fruits below opens to a full profile.
A small, thick-skinned wild African citrus with intensely fragrant peel and tart pulp — used more for marmalade and traditional medicine than fresh eating.
An odd umbrella-leafed forest plant with a single yellow fruit hidden under its canopy — edible only when fully ripe, and toxic in every other part.
A tropical berry of the genus Musa, the most widely consumed fruit in the world by weight, mostly grown from a single sterile clone.
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 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 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 tiny citrus from Southeast Asia — a cross between mandarin orange and kumquat, producing a small round fruit with orange flesh and a thin green skin; intensely sour with aromatic orange notes, indispensable in Filipino and Malaysian cooking.
A bright orange Caribbean fruit (also called egg-fruit) with the dry mealy texture of a hard-boiled egg yolk — eaten fresh, in shakes, or as a chilled custard.
An orange-fleshed netted melon — the muskmelon of summer markets, named after a papal estate in Italy, eaten chilled with prosciutto or as a breakfast staple.
A bred-for-extreme chili pepper that held the Guinness record as the world's hottest from 2013 to 2023, with an averaged 1.6 million Scoville heat units.
The ancient ancestor of all citrus fruits — a large, rough-skinned yellow fruit valued more for its thick, fragrant pith and essential oil than its sparse, acidic juice; the etrog used in Jewish Sukkot ritual and the source of candied peel worldwide.
A small, easy-peeling, seedless winter mandarin — accidentally created in an Algerian orphanage garden in 1902, now the most popular winter snack citrus in Western countries.
The seed of a tropical palm, technically a drupe rather than a nut, source of oil, milk, water, flesh, and one of the most-used ingredients in tropical cooking.
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, intensely tart purple-blue plum almost too astringent to eat fresh — the British countryside fruit of choice for jam, gin, and preserves.
The visually striking fruit of a Central American climbing cactus — bright pink-red shell with green spiky scales, opening to white or magenta flesh dotted with tiny black seeds.
A spiky-shelled Southeast Asian fruit with intensely pungent custard-textured flesh — banned from many hotels and public transit in Asia for its smell, but called the "King of Fruits" where it's eaten.
An Australian native citrus shaped like a small finger that releases tiny "caviar pearls" of tart citrus juice when cut open — a fine-dining garnish prized for its visual drama and crisp acidity.
An aromatic Israeli muskmelon hybrid created in the 1970s — netted yellow skin with pale green sweet flesh, considered the most fragrant of the supermarket melons.
The most complex and honey-sweet of all plums — a green-skinned, golden-fleshed European plum with a flavour of remarkable depth, described as combining honey, apricot, and fresh cream; considered by many to be the best-tasting plum variety, though its thin skin, tendency to split, and small size make it commercially unviable.
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 pale-green melon with smooth white-yellow rind and pale-green flesh, milder and sweeter than cantaloupe — a summertime hydration fruit.
A medium-hot Mexican chili pepper with thick walls and bright vegetal heat — eaten fresh, pickled, smoked into chipotles, or stuffed and breaded.
An East Asian plum species that's the basis for most modern American supermarket plums — large, juicy, with red or yellow skin and easily separated flesh from a small pit.
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.
An African horned melon with bright orange spiky skin and electric-green jelly flesh — striking enough to be sold as decoration, with a mild banana-cucumber-lime flavor.
A small, grape-sized tropical fruit of Southeast Asia — langsat grows in tight pendant clusters on the trunk and branches of tall trees, with thin, yellow-brown skin that releases a milky latex when broken; the translucent, jelly-like flesh is divided into segments, varying from sweet-tart to slightly bitter depending on how the seed is handled when eating; a beloved fresh fruit in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
A bright yellow citrus with sharply acidic juice and aromatic peel — possibly the single most-used fruit in the global kitchen for its capacity to brighten everything.
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 Asian fruit related to lychee but smaller, milder, and with a clear translucent flesh — the "dragon eye" of Chinese markets, eaten fresh or dried as a tonic ingredient.
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.
A small loose-skinned orange citrus — the original ancestor species behind clementines, satsumas, tangerines, and most modern winter snack-citrus varieties.
A tropical drupe known as the "king of fruits" in South Asia, prized for its sweet, juicy flesh and grown across more than 100 countries.
A purple-shelled tropical Asian fruit with snow-white segmented flesh of intense sweet-tart flavor — the "queen of fruits" to many connoisseurs, banned from U.S. import for decades, now slowly returning.
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.
The general category covering hundreds of *Cucumis melo* varieties — cantaloupes, honeydews, galias, casabas, and dozens more — eaten across cultures from breakfast to dessert.
A sweeter, thinner-skinned lemon with floral orange notes — a natural hybrid of lemon and mandarin orange discovered in China and popularised in California; prized for its edible skin, minimal bitterness, and fragrant juice.
The fruit of the Swiss cheese plant — a fragrant tropical curiosity that ripens over 12 months, tastes like pineapple-banana, and is mildly toxic until fully ripe.
A grape-sized Mexican vine fruit (also called Mexican sour gherkin or cucamelon) that looks exactly like a tiny watermelon but tastes like a tart cucumber-lime.
The catch-all category for fragrant netted-skin melons including American cantaloupes — named for the musky aroma of fully ripe fruit, central to summer fruit traditions worldwide.
The Asian pear — round, apple-shaped, with golden-yellow skin and exceptionally crisp, juicy, grainy white flesh; doesn't soften like European pears but is eaten firm and crunchy, with a clean sweet flavour.
A smooth-skinned variant of the peach, the same species genetically with one gene difference, often slightly more tart and aromatic than its fuzzy cousin.
A striking, waxy, pungent tropical fruit — the noni (Indian mulberry) produces lumpy, white-yellow fruit year-round on small trees throughout the Pacific and Indian Ocean tropics; the ripe fruit has a powerful, distinctively unpleasant smell that has earned it nicknames including cheese fruit and vomit fruit; despite this, it has been consumed by Pacific Islander peoples for millennia and became a major health food fad in the early 2000s.
A bright citrus with sweet juicy flesh and aromatic peel, the world's most widely cultivated fruit by tonnage and the namesake for the color itself.
A small purple or yellow tropical fruit with intensely fragrant pulp full of crunchy edible seeds — the wow ingredient of cocktails, sorbets, and Latin American desserts.
An orange-red fall fruit with two distinct varieties — astringent (must be fully ripe) and non-astringent (eaten firm) — central to Korean and Japanese autumn traditions, dried into kaki sticks.
A tropical multiple fruit with spiky armor and a crown of leaves, sweet and acidic, eaten fresh, juiced, grilled, or canned.
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 starchier cousin of the banana, eaten cooked across tropical cuisines from West Africa to Latin America to South Asia — fried, mashed, boiled, or grilled, but rarely raw.
A tough-skinned fruit packed with hundreds of jewel-like seeds (arils), each surrounded by tart-sweet juice — a Persian native steeped in mythology.
Australia's native peach — a small, bright red fruit with tart, tangy flesh and a large deeply ridged stone; a staple of Aboriginal Australian diet for thousands of years, now increasingly used in Australian native cuisine and bush food products.
A pear-shaped, fragrant, hard-fleshed fruit eaten almost exclusively cooked — the basis of Spanish *membrillo* paste and a foundational ingredient in Mediterranean and Persian sweets.
A dried grape — concentrated sweetness from the most ancient food-preservation method, central to baking, snacking, and cuisines from Persian to Mexican to American school lunchboxes.
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, jewel-like red berry — translucent, intensely tart, and a classic Northern European garden fruit used in jellies, sauces for game, and showcase dessert garnishes.
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.
The bitter orange used for the world's most celebrated marmalade — too sour and pungent to eat fresh, its thick peel and intensely flavoured juice are perfect for jam-making; the brief winter season (January–February) is eagerly awaited by British marmalade makers, and the orange's history in Spain stretches to the Moorish period.
A small red ribbed Brazilian backyard fruit (also called pitanga) with intense complex flavor between cherry, raspberry, and tropical resin — extreme polarity between underripe (terrible) and ripe (delicious).
A sticky brown pod-fruit with intensely tart-sweet pulp — fundamental to Indian, Southeast Asian, Mexican, and Caribbean cuisines, providing sour acidity in pad thai, chutneys, and chamoy.
A tangerine-pomelo hybrid with a distinctive nipple-like bump at the stem end — juicy, sweet-tart, easy to peel, and the genetic ancestor of several modern grocery citrus varieties.
A small, sweet, easy-to-peel citrus fruit, a member of the mandarin orange family that gives most modern citrus hybrids their sweetness.
A small, tart-sweet African fruit (also called Spanish tamarind) eaten fresh or made into juice, with bright orange flesh around large flat seeds and a flavor between apple and tamarind.
A large, water-rich melon with a thick striped rind and bright pink-red flesh — a summer staple worldwide and originally an African crop.
A pale translucent variety of redcurrant — sweeter, less acidic, eaten fresh more than its red sibling, and once a fixture of Victorian dessert tables for its jewel-like appearance.
A small, sour-sweet yellow-orange fruit known as wild plum or sea lemon, eaten across African savannas and used for its oil-rich seed in traditional cosmetics.
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 N, or end with N. Or browse the full fruits index.