On Kumquats, Loquats and The Magical Fruit that Grew from the Jungle Next Door

When I was a wee lad in California who never imagined of one day having a blog (for there were no such things as blogs when I was a wee lad in California), my neighbors had a garden that at the time seemed like a jungle to me. They grew bananas and apples and pears and peaches and herbs and potatoes and carrots. Looking over our back fence was like looking into another world where I imagined tigers roamed and little men with spears lived in thatched huts.

Some of this wilderness crossed the line into our yard. And one tree in particular held my imagination. It’s long branches and enormous green leaves shaded me as I sat with my back to the fence, my mind racing with make believe adventures. Hanging from these branches were bunches and bunches of orange fruit, the likes of which I had never seen before.

As I grew older, my attention was drawn to these fruit in a new way. I found, one fateful day, that I could reach them. And I found that if no one was paying attention, I could spend an entire afternoon devouring their sweetness. I would pluck them from the tree and feel the fuzz of their skins on my fingers. Unsure of how to proceed, I decided it best to peel the skin away, revealing the glistening meat within. The meat hid large brown seed that could only be found by eating the sweet glistening fruit.

I was in heaven.

The one problem is that I still did not know what these fruits were called. As time went on, I decided to call them kumquats. I am not sure where the name came from, but it stuck. And from the time I was a wee lad in California, I believed kumquats to be the magical fruit that grew from the jungle next door.

However, I was wrong. The fruits were not kumquats. They were, as I found out recently, loquats. What I had assumed as a wee lad in California was incorrect. It was close, but it was wrong.

And yet, I will still think of those fruits as kumquats. And I will still think of that yard as a jungle. For those memories are magical to me. And those fruits sustained a fair number of imaginary adventures.

And for me, they will always be kumquats.