Wild Fruits of Goa

As Goa has favourable climatic conditions, good soil and rich ecological factors, a number of wild fruits and berries can be seen growing in various places. These seasonal fruits are very popular among the locals and are usually found in Goa during the summer season. 
A number of these wild fruits are available from hillside trees only during the months of March, April and May. Some of these can also be seen during a fruit festival known as the 'Konkan Fruit Festival'. They are also sold at various places in the local markets.Some of the main wild fruits and berries that can be found include Syzygium cuminis or 'Jambhalam' as the fruit is known in Konkani, Carissa carandas or 'Kantam', Zizyphus Rugosa or 'chunnam', Physalis or 'Chirputtam', Garcinia indica or 'Kokam' and many more.

The Kanta berry (कानटा)

The Kanta berry is the rarest and maybe the most valuable berry of the 3 introduced here today. It grows on higher bushes around April and May and the fruit has a dimension of 1 inch, with 2/3 of the fruit being flesh (the seed is brown and quite tiny). This fruit is particularly tricky because you have to be lucky to find a sweet one, but if you do you ll discover that the taste comes close to a cherry’s. One of the berries on the picture has a white sticky substance on the skin, that’s some type of fruit glue which the berry emits. Its extremely sticky!

The Zunna Berry (जुनना)

The Zunna berry is not much bigger then 1 cm in diameter and grows on low bushes. The raw berry is green and ripens to a white color till it drops and turns a bit transparent. When it is over ripe the flesh dissolves in your mouth, leaving a small white seed bare. The flesh is kind of mealy and tastes light sweet, which is incomparable to other fruits in this world. The fruits ripen around April-May depending on the region and weather situation in Goa.

The Zara Berry (जारा)

The Zara berry is sold by local ladies in April-May in the Mapusa Market, which makes its availability quite common for a few days in those months. The fruit is 1 cm in dimension, green unripe and the skin ripens purple/black while the flesh and seeds keep their greenish hue. The fruit is sweet but at times quite sour too, the taste can be compared to the European gooseberries. One interesting fact of the fruit seed is, that locals keep it to dry in the sun, to crash it afterwards. Inside that green seed is another smaller beige colored seed which is consumed as delicacy, even the ants were going crazy for the inner seed, carrying the pieces quickly away.

As mentioned above those 3 berries are known under this names in the Bardez Taluka, so names might vary all over Goa and even India. There are no English names most certainly, so what we are looking for is a botanical name and its nutritional values. Most surely those berries can be processed to further use in the kitchen. In Goa it is mostly consumed raw directly from the trees because they don’t keep very long and rotten quickly enough.