---

the kiwano horned melon gives every appearance of being the fruit experience of a lifetime. it's pretty expensive, and comes with an official-looking genuine kiwano sticker. accept no imitations! this is the real kiwano deal!

it is, fairly obviously, one visually exciting fruit.

it's spiky and bright orange, with thrilling fractal whirls of darker colour spiralling around the horns and stretching through the valleys between them. it has a promising weight, too. i couldn't wait to get this one home and crack it open.

inside, the kiwano's packed with masses of deep green flesh — faintly reminiscent of a kiwi fruit, actually, which could go some way towards explaining the name — and hundreds of slim seeds that look like they'd crunch deliciously in your mouth.

it's so perfect, it makes you want to believe in god.

luckily, just as you're in imminent danger of taking the first hesitant step down the slippery slope of fruit-inspired monotheism, you rapidly come to the realisation that this is quite possibly the most steadfastly inedible fruit known to man. the seeds pop enthusiastically from their housing as you dig into the flesh, but it comes away as a frothy, gelatinous mess that looks more like something you'd expect to see hidden in the corner of a garden pond than anything you'd particularly like to eat. it's slimy, sloppy and almost entirely without flavour; the seeds are tough and fibrous and thoroughly unenjoyable to chew through.

i had real trouble eating all of this one (which i felt i needed to do in the name of strict empirical science, if not that of actual gastronomic enjoyment), and i think it's the only fruit i've eaten that made me go yeuch when i'd finished. the consistency of the flesh made me nauseous after a while, and the seeds had a conspicuously unpleasant taste that made me feel a little twinge of ancient primal unease about eating them in the first place.

to reassure myself after the fact, i found a page all about the damn thing, which gave me the following useful information:

[bitter, nonvolatile compounds] are present in [the kiwano], making it extremely bitter. These compounds are very toxic to mammals, however as they are the most bitter substances known they are also feeding deterrents and very rarely eaten by mammals.

very toxic to mammals? heh, well, that's alright then!

more usefully, though, it says that

[the kiwano] is grown as an ornamental fruit in New Zealand, Kenya, Israel and the USA and its market is expanding. Since the fruits have a long shelf life and retain their decorative appeal for many months at room temperature it can be developed into a major ornamental fruit.

The present commercial cultigene has a rather bland taste which severely limits its potential as an eating fruit. If its eating quality can be improved, mainly by increasing sugar content, acidity, and aroma, it would be marketed as a new fruit.

so i guess i'm not alone in thinking that it's really not a fun thing to eat.

why the hell do they sell it in the supermarket, then? i can't remember the last time i went to waitrose to shop for ornaments.

oh well. this is certainly a really pretty fruit, so it gets marks for presentation, but in all other fruity respects it's a dismal failure. the first delicious bite is with the eye; sadly, it's all downhill from there.