Fruit
The spherical to oval fruit bearing the indented stem and four sepals, can weigh up to 500 grams. The smooth, shiny and thin shell ranges in shade from yellow to red-orange. The slightly lighter fleshed fruits can contain up to eight seeds and may have an astringent taste. With increasing maturity, the fruit softens, similar to a kiwifruit.
The high content of tannin in the still-immature kaki provides a bitter component reminiscent of pear and apricot flavors, which becomes weaker with progressive maturation. The furry taste, caused by the tannins, is often reduced during the ripening process, or by frost. The very high proportion of beta-carotene (provitamin A) makes the kaki fruit nutritionally valuable.
Read more about this topic: Diospyros Kaki
Famous quotes containing the word fruit:
“Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)
“It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.”
—Emily Carr (1871–1945)
“And, shrilling from the solar course,
Or from fruit of chemic force,
Procession of a soul in matter,
Or the speeding change of water,
Or out of the good of evil born,
Came Uriel’s voice of cherub scorn,
And a blush tinged the upper sky,
And the gods shook, they knew not why.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)