1
Cactus Pear
Opuntia ficus-indica
A magenta-fleshed prickly cactus fruit (also called prickly pear or tuna) with a sweet melon-watermelon flavor — heavily harvested in Mexico, Sicily, and the American Southwest.
If you've been searching for fruits that start with C, you'll find 18 detailed fruits below. We're not interested in giving you only a list of names — every entry on this page links to a full profile with the kind of detail you'd actually want to know.
For fruits, that means scientific name, family, fruit type, season, nutrition, and varieties.
List of Fruits That Start With C
2
Calamansi
Citrus × microcarpa (syn. Calamondin)
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.
3
Canistel
Pouteria campechiana
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.
4
Cantaloupe
Cucumis melo var. cantalupensis (European); var. reticulatus (American)
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.
5
Carolina Reaper
Capsicum chinense
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.
6
Caviar Lime
Citrus australasica
An Australian rainforest citrus whose elongated finger-shaped fruits burst with translucent pearl-like vesicles — a high-end garnish that exploded in popularity with molecular cuisine.
7
Cempedak
Artocarpus integer
A close cousin of jackfruit grown across Malaysia and Indonesia — smaller, sweeter, more pungent, and rarely seen outside Southeast Asia because of its overpowering smell.
8
Cherimoya
Annona cherimola
A heart-shaped Andean fruit with green dimpled skin and creamy custard-like flesh — described by Mark Twain as "the most delicious fruit known to men," with a flavor that combines banana, pineapple, and strawberry.
9
Cherry
Prunus avium (sweet) / Prunus cerasus (tart)
A small stone fruit of the rose family, with sweet eating varieties and tart pie varieties — pitted and bright in pies, preserves, and liqueurs.
10
Chico Fruit
Manilkara zapota
Another name for sapodilla — a small brown Mexican-Filipino fruit with grainy sweet flesh tasting of brown sugar and pear, tied to the same tree that produces chicle (chewing-gum sap).
11
Chile Pepper
Capsicum (genus, multiple species)
A diverse family of fiery fruits from the Capsicum genus — used fresh, dried, smoked, ground, and fermented across nearly every world cuisine.
12
Citron
Citrus medica
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.
13
Clementine
Citrus × clementina
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.
14
Cloudberry
Rubus chamaemorus
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.
15
Coco-de-Mer
Lodoicea maldivica
The largest seed in the plant kingdom — a giant Seychelles double-coconut weighing up to 25 kg, so rare that each individual fruit is government-tracked.
16
Coconut
Cocos nucifera
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.
17
Crab Apple
Malus sylvestris (European wild crab); Malus hupehensis and others (ornamental crab varieties)
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.
18
Cranberry
Vaccinium macrocarpon
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.
About fruits starting with C
That's our current list of fruits starting with the letter C. We add new entries every week — if you have a favorite fruit starting with C that isn't on this page, let us know and we'll write it up.
Looking for more? Try fruits that end with C, or contain C anywhere in the name.