Posted on 05/28/2021 7:58:19 AM PDT by mylife
los Angeles does, contrary to what some believe, have seasons; they just aren’t the same as those in the Northeast or Midwest. There isn’t really a fall or a winter. Instead, there’s Fire Season, Rainy Three Weeks, and June Gloom, among others. But there’s another way to measure the passage of time: by fruit. We’re not talking about what’s in the farmer’s markets, but what’s growing on the streets, in parking lots, in plots of land that may or may not belong to anyone.
Los Angeles, especially the hotter, drier East Side, is not home to an unusually large number of native edible plants, but it is home to an absolutely berserk amount of non-native fruit trees, planted both intentionally and accidentally. Many of these simply line neighborhood streets. Among them, especially prominent on the East Side, in now-trendy neighborhoods like Silver Lake, Echo Park, and Atwater Village, is the loquat.
The loquat—an extremely juicy, incredibly prolific, mighty delicious sweet-sour fruit, bright yellow in color, somewhere between a plum and a mango in flavor—is so common that you can hardly walk more than three or four houses in these neighborhoods without passing one. And yet it isn’t celebrated, prized, or, for the most part, eaten at all. You can tell this because if they were valued, then all those trees wouldn’t be absolutely heavy with fruit. “Nobody eats them,” says Alissa Walker, a Los Angeles–based journalist and loquat enthusiast, of the loquat trees in her neighborhood. “They just hang on the trees, and I’m like, ‘Is anyone going to eat these?’”
(Excerpt) Read more at atlasobscura.com ...
They seem to be sorta like blackberries or dewberries on trees. But there is nothing nastier than a mulberry tree that hangs over a sidewalk. What a mess!
There are thousands of cats everywhere in most urban environments, and thousands of rats and pigeons also. The trouble is, poor homeless do not have enough shot guns or cartridges to take advantage of this bounty.
So, if we all just “Donate a Shotgun”, much like Joe Biden has suggested, we could kill two stones with one bird. Not only would there be plenty to eat, many more shootings, emergency room visits, and deaths would be possible. This is the Progressive Plan, isn’t it? Well, let’s get on with it!
Yep I’ll bet its messy. They sound delicious though. Not sure what dewberries are though. We have only basics around us like blackberries, raspberries, blueberries 🫐
Many years ago I rented a house in Newport Beach (inland) that had lots of fruit trees—peaches, plums, lemons, limes, avocados.
What do you with a hundred avocados?
What do you do with five hundred plums and peaches?
Every work day I filled a big straw basket, brought it into the office, and put it in the lunch-room.
My uncle lived in Price Utah where they had a big infestation of feral cats years ago. He’d sit on his back porch and pot them with his .22 rifle. Darned if he didn’t have one of the most productive gardens in the city. Lol.
An other use for spare cats.
North Florida gets down to about 26* for a few hours a few nights per year. They grow great!
Flocks of birds can swoop in and eat every loquat fruit in a few hours
They are delicious: lightly sweet, good flavor and the tree produces huge numbers. Give them a try - but don't park you car under the tree.. they can stain the paint.
Asians here with chestnut trees. They will stop in the road to gather them.
If you are eating chestnuts, you are eating worms
In Vietnam, we used to lie on our backs and shoot the top branches of the mango trees and catch the fruit when it fell. Wonderful supplement to the C-Rations.
True - but it does mean that you have to eat a whole more of them to enough.
But you can great distance when spitting that smooth, large seed across the yard.
They’re out there. I drove the Pacheco Pass between Gilroy and I-5 a couple months ago, and I saw signs for ten-for-a-buck avocados.
Memories. I still remember the glut of unused “Ham and MoFos” cans. At least MREs have more choice than those dammed C-Rats cases and the same damm meals day after day after day....
Lol. That reminds me. In 1980 while living in Hollywood I bought a used Honda 750. The tires were shot so I bought a new pair. I put the old one out on the street with a sign “Free tires”. They were still there 4 hours later. So I put a new sign out that said “Tires, $10. Inquire within.” They were gone within 10 minutes.
Decades ago there were orange trees around some of the UCLA tennis courts. You could play and take a break and eat oranges, big, juicy, flavorful oranges.
When I was a lad in SoCal in the 50s warning kids not to eat the bright-red castor beans in our neighbors’ yards. So stuff that looks tasty might not be a good idea unless you know for sure what you’re trying.
The mulberry I tasted is sweet but bland, no complexity or tartness. Birds plant it everywhere.
A bet those would make a delicious liquor, similar to Grand Marnier
When I did get stuck with the MoFos, I drained the nasty juice out of the can, replaced it with water, then when cooked, poured the water out.
I always swore that I would find the owners of Blue Star Food Manufacturing, inc., and force them at M-14 point to eat their own product.
Racoons
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