Going Nuts Over the Fruit and Spice Park!

Hi Blog! On Saturday, February 21, 2015, we left the Everglades National Park and headed back to the Miami Everglades Resort. It was lunchtime, so we did a quick check on Yelp and found the Mango Cafe. After slurping down a passion fruit shake (Kathy) and banana shake (Dave), we both enjoyed a whole wheat veggie wrap. As it turns out, the Mango Cafe shares a parking lot with the Fruit and Spice Park. We had heard about this attraction from some fellow campers. Their advice was to take the tour first before sampling the tropical fruits, so we did. We arrived just in time for the 1:30 tour. The tours are 11:00, 1:30 and 3:00.

Here is our tour guide extolling the virtues of the luffa.  Did you know that luffa is classified in the cucumber family. They can be eaten like a vegetable when they are very young. You can see them growing on the trellis behind our guide. They do look like giant cucumbers, but when dried and peeled, you get the loofah scrubbing sponge.

As we continued on our tour, we learned a little history of the park. The Preston B. Bird/ Mary Heinlein, Fruit & Spice Park is the only tropical botanical garden of its kind in the United States. The unique 37-acre public facility is owned and operated by the Miami-Dade County Park and Recreation Open Spaces. The Park's tropical climate can be found nowhere else in the continental U.S. and hosts over 500 varieties of fruits, vegetables, spices, herbs, and nuts, and other commercially important plant specimens from around the world. Centered around a small lake, there are a number of pools and ponds throughout the park providing water and a place for growing all kinds of pond lilies.

The Park showcases 150 varieties of mango, 75 varieties of bananas, 70 bamboo varieties, and numerous other exotic edibles. The banana flower is very impressive hanging down below a bunch of ripening bananas.

The park has a variety of custard apples - pawpaw, cherimoya, squamosa and sapote. If you have never tried one, you are in for a treat. We had a chance to eat several cherimoya when we visited Peru and Ecuador. Think of vanilla pudding growing on trees and you get the idea.

We were surprised to see a Baobab Tree. We kept looking around for Timon and Pumbaa. The Baobab Tree produces a fruit which has a velvety shell and is about the size of a coconut, weighing about 3 pounds. It has an acidic, tart flavor, described as somewhere between grapefruit, pear, and vanilla. It is not fruit season for the baobab, so we'll have to wait until next time to try some.

One of our favorite trees was the Jackfruit.  The flesh of the jackfruit is starchy and fibrous and is a source of dietary fiber. The flavor is comparable to a combination of apple, pineapple, mango, and banana. It is so flavorful that its taste was used as the source for the flavor of "Juicy Fruit" gum!  The fruits hang within easy reach at the bottom of the tree and they are gigantic.

They are also very photographable. Here is Kathy taking her turn posing with the Jackfruit. These puppies are so heavy, she needed help picking them up.  Dave has no comment on this photo.

The park has been divided into eco zones - Tropical America, Africa, Australia & Pacific, Asia and Mediterranean. The center point for the Mediterranean region was these lovely terraced gardens filled with tomatoes, peppers, garlic, onion herbs and spices. During the tour we chewed on curry leaves - a very mild spice taste. We also got to crush some of the leaves of the bay tree, the fragrant oil of which was used was used to make bay rum, the aroma of which is the basis for Old Spice deodorant and shaving products.

The jackfruit tree might bear the biggest fruit, but the one that got the most comments was the Sausage Tree and here you can see why. It is actually a Kigelia Tree, but the fruit that hangs down like sausage links has earned it the nickname "sausage tree." By the way, the fruit is not eaten by humans. It is too tough. But if you Google "drunk baboons" on YouTube, you can see what happens when the sausage fruit ferments and the baboons eat too much of it.

After the tour, we walked around to get a closer look at all the different fruits and spices. We were heading back to the visitor center to try samples of what was in season, when Dave nearly got hit by a flying canistel. This orange-yellow fruit fell from the sky as we walked by. The park guide says, "If you see fruit on the ground and you know what it is your may eat that fruit within the park - however, not all fruit is edible." Not wanting to risk it, we brought the offending fruit into the visitor center for identification. Our guide was manning the desk and he confirmed it was edible and he happened to have a sample for us to try. It was sweet with the consistency of a cooked sweet potato. We kept our little canistel and ate him for breakfast on Sunday.

You can tell we enjoyed our visit, but David allowed as how he especially enjoyed hunting down all the exotic fruits and spices.  Here he gets into the spirit of the hunt:

We certainly enjoyed exploring the world of tropical fruits and spices and can't wait to try some more. So ends another RV adventure.