Singapore Cherries: A surprising delight in quick-growing trees
Muntingia calabura) and was useful for growing fast. It would give green volume and shade while slower-growing plants came up. It seemed a stopgap tree, not worth taking that seriously.
Within two years it was full-sized, with abundant leaves and, soon, small white-petalled flowers. The surprise was the small red fruits that followed, really like tiny cherries. The tree produces almost continuously, but only a few ripen every day. We find them shaken off by the wind on the ground below.
When I was told they were edible, I had little expectation. Many plants have edible fruit, in that they won’t poison you, but that doesn’t really make them worth eating. The fruits tend to have wincingly bitter notes or tannic aftertastes that leave your mouth puckered. Some, like wax or rose apples (Syzygium samarangense) have pleasantly crunchy textures, but little taste. And then there are the sour fruits beloved of Indian school kids, like starberries (Phyllanthus acidus) or bilimbi (Averrhoa bilimbi), which are refreshing on a hot summer day, eaten with salt and washed down with lots of water, or made into a pickle, but that’s about it.
Plants with fruits that are really worth eating have been bred by horticulturists into variants grown for that purpose, like the mango and chikoo trees that are loading with abundant, large, sweet and juicy fruits now. Some are known to be good, like the delicious yellow fruit of khirni (Manilkara hexandra), but the tree is so difficult or slow to grow that you are never likely to find much
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