Can you tell me about any lesser-known local fruits or vegetables in your area that you think more people should discover?

Someone else mentioned pawpaws but i just want to emphasize pawpaws are the shit. Plus if you live in the Eastern US especially the Midwest pawpaw season is HERE. You have no excuse not to leave your house this moment and find your nearest pawpaw grove.

Not convinced? Congrats you have subscribed to pawpaw facts:

• they are related to the custard apple and were brought this far north in the shit of prehistoric giant sloths
• they taste like somewhere between a mango and a banana, and so our ancestors in all their wisdom gave them names like Indiana banana, Ohio banana, \ banana
• they are a CAPITALIST NIGHTMARE as they have terrible shelf life so can really only be eaten fresh or bought from a farmers market
• foraging for pawpaws is super fun as they grow in groves, have super skinny trunks and branches with large long leaves and surprisingly big fruit. To harvest pawpaws you give the trees a gentle shake and ripe fruit will just fall off. Don’t shake too hard or you might knock down fruit that isn’t ripe! Not cool!
• to enjoy just shake em down, cut it open and eat the fresh fruit inside (not the skin). Do not eat the big ass seeds leave them where you found em so that out beautiful native pawpaw groves FLOURISH

All in all pawpaws are 10/10 if you want to feel like a literal Animal Crossing character shaking down trees for sustenance and having a great time eating fresh fruit outdoors

Appalachian area here, and more people need to know about pawpaws for sure.

Huckleberries are real y'all.

My mom's tomatoes. They taste like water but my she's really proud of them and always beams when someone can taste that they're home grown. So next time you're at my moms house, make sure to ask for something with tomatoes

Concord grapes. You all know the flavor, because it’s the flavor that artificial grape flavor is based on, but I’ve only seen the real things in farmers’ markets in the Northeast US. They’re only available for a short period, and they’re amazing. A blend of intensely sweet and intensely tart.

Rambutans. They look like fluffy sea urchins but you crack that shell open and it’s soooo good. Much like leches.

Definitely muscadines and persimmons.

How has no one mentioned saskatoons / juneberries / serviceberries yet? Looks like a blueberry except it grows on a tree.

While sugar beet is hardly unknown, try Zuckerrübensirup if you're near Germany, a black-ish sirup made from them. You can usually also get it in the Netherlands and sometimes in Denmark at least.

There are similar products in other countries, but they lack the distinct taste the German variant has that makes it such an awesome spread! And no, it has nothing to do with Marmite, which is a good thing.

Mulberries are awesome; they're tasty and they're an excellent source of dietary iron, too.

They have two things going against them, though: as fruits they're pretty fragile, even more so than other berries; and when they're flowering, they're highly allergenic for a lot of people. Lots of cities actually ban growing mulberry trees within city limits because of the allergy problem.

Of stuff that grows right in my neighborhood in the Bay Area, California, I'd point out passionfruit and prickly-pears as somewhat unusual fruit.

Passionfruit vines like to grow on fences; they make trippy-looking flowers that mature into lemon-sized fruits full of tasty gooey arils around their seeds.

Prickly-pears are Opuntia cactus, which seem to do oddly well here in even rough and windy coastal areas. The same species can also be harvested for the young cactus pads, which are nopales in Spanish; skin 'em and fry 'em up and put 'em in vegetarian tacos.

Mirabella plums. Like little miniature plums, they can be quite sweet

I received earth gems in my vege box last week. I had never heard of them before. Apparently a bit like yams or beetroot. Haven't cooked them yet:

Loquats are sweet, lightly tart and deliciously juicy. A bit like a very firm peach or plum.

Longyan (dragon eyes) are like lychees but smaller and yellow. They're less sweet than lychees (which tbh I often find a little cloying) and maybe a little more flavourful.

In Italy we have the chinotto, which is a fruit from the Citrus family that is too bitter to be eaten by itself, but we make a soft drink out of it that is simply perfect.

Pomelo. Like grapefruit without the mess.

Wild strawberries (Fragaria vesca). Incredibly fragrant and sweet. Regular strawberryies can't compare.

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My favourite langsat. It's sweet and sometimes sour, flesh is like rambutan.

Vidalia onions

Technically not my area, but mangosteen. Mostly grown in South-East Asia, it's a sour sweet fruit with the texture and structure like a soft orange, and one big seed per segment. It is seriously delicious.

Huckleberries. They're the summer ground cover in Colorado subalpine forests. Like a mix between a raspberry and a blueberry. So good when you're just laying in a hammock by a lake smoking doobers and eating berries off the ground.

feijoa, a South American fruit that made it to New Zealand - now just about every backyard in NZ has one, or many of them

Check out Taro and Cassava. Taro is a root vegetable similar to arrowroot and has now replaced potatoes for me (except for mash), and I don't even know how to explain cassava, but both are absolutely delicious when boiled with coconut milk/cream.

Where i live, mayapple! But you can't buy them anywhere, you have to just pick them. Luckily they're all over the place lol

Macadamia nuts. Not the roasted ones, not the shelled dry ones you can buy in the store. They are garbage compared to the unshelled ones, even if you do need a special device to open them and they can be very frustrating to eat fresh.

When they're freshly opened, they're opaque brighter white, sweet and even a little juicy. It's a completely different experience from the ones you can buy off the shelf. It's honestly a shame Australia doesn't have a bigger market for the fresh ones.

I went to school in Hawai'i and discovered strawberry guava - the plant is an invasive species that chokes the life out of everything it can, but it bears the most delicious fruit.

American Wild Plum

Chokecherry These make your mouth feel furry inside if you eat them, but make the best syrup for pancakes

Finger limes. Tastes like lime sorbet but with the texture of roe.

Do thimbleberries count? Not sure how local they are to me, but they're so tasty. Think a sweeter, more fragile raspberry. They make an excellent jam! my only complaint I have is how fragile they are, they only last a day or two in the fridge

Salmon berries!

Wild blueberries. They're smaller, sweeter, and grow on a low bush. The bigger, high bush blueberries may as well be a different fruit.

Since huckleberries were already mentioned, I'll go for salal berries. Taste like flowery blueberries and make an amazing sauce, especially if you mix them with huckleberries.

Snakefruit!

Just make sure to peel the skin off.

Water apples, or wax apple. Their name is pretty much self-explanatory in terms of the taste. Really refreshing in the tropics.

Dwarf raspberry/dewberry. My pop used to call it 'gumbo' for some reason.

Its a tiny little raspberry plant that produces one berry per plant, so its hard to get it in any quantity.

The fruit itself is more juicy than a regular raspberry, and tastes more like fake raspberry flavored candy. Its always a treat to find these while hiking.

Boysenberries

I'd also like to mention Sapota.

Honorary mention to Grewia asiatica and Syzygium.

I've been meaning to look into planting some Camas bulbs. A kind of tuber crop grown by indigenous people around here. Used to be entire prairies of them before whitey showed up

Pakay! Also called ice cream bean. It's a giant bean, inside there's big seeds surrounded in white solid-fluffy stuff. You eat the white stuff. It's sweet without being overpowering and the consistency is interesting. Delicious

I don't see it mentioned so maybe it's not lesser known, but jackfruit is amazing. SEA like most amazing fruit but have seen it more often in North America. Fresh, not the prepped and sauced vegan style.

Rambutan

rutabaga (swedish/yellow turnip)

one of the best vegetables to make a mash with

So not in my area, but I recently discovered cloudberry jam, which is absolutely delicious. It's like a mix of citrus and strawberry.

Persimmons. Have a full size tree about to drop maybe 40 pounds of them. And I have no idea what to do with that many.

Jujubes. They're like a dryer sweeter small apple. They don't need a lot to grow where I am and there's hundreds per tree.

Maypops, which are a north american species of passionfruit. Obviously not a great hand fruit.

Marian plum. A bit too sour to eat on it's own but a spiced and preserved ones taste pretty damn good.

Loquats! Its like eating a giant sweet grape

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Ground cherries! They grow so well too.

Gooseberries are found in several traditional recipes from southern Netherlands, but most supermarkets no longer carry the fruit.

Arum is an incredbibly underrated veg too, with an amazing texture.