Papayas grow on small, soft-wooded, more or less umbrella-shaped trees, Carica papaya, of the papaya family. Many cultivars exist, with some bearing fruits the size of a watermelon. Mostly their flesh is yellowish, though the one above is reddish, and all types have very subtle taste. Papayas at the best stage for eating often look bruised and discolored. If you don't know how to choose a papaya, have the vendor pick a good one for you, and when the the bruised-looking skin is cut away, probably you'll have something fine. Discard the soft, black seeds. Papayas are famed for aiding digestion.
copyright free image courtesy of P. Hughes made available through Wikimedia Commons.Breadfruit, sometimes called Yaka in Mexico, is seldom spotted in Mexican mercados, though it's most likely to appear along the Pacific coast, as in Nayarit, where it arrived during the 1700 on Spanish galleons coming from its homeland on South Pacific islands.
Breadfruits can be huge, weighing up to 20kilos (44pounds) with a diameter of up to 60cm (2ft). It's eaten green or mature, and like potatoes fried or boiled. The flesh is too hard and sticky to eat raw. It's considered an especially nutritive food.
copyright free image courtesy of Dick Culbert made available through Wikimedia Commons.Soursop, except for its smaller size and many soft, short, blunt spines and more irregular shape is similar to breadfruit. It can weigh up to 3kilos (7 pounds) and have a diameter of up to 50cm (20 inches). Soursop is the fruit of a small tree, Annona muricata of the custard apple family, and native to tropical America. Its flesh is white, very slightly acid, with a pleasant taste, and containing numerous bean-size seeds. It's closely related to the cherimoya, which also is eaten raw.
copyright free image courtesy of Emőke Dénes made available through Wikimedia Commons.
Coconuts, as we call them in English, are fruits of the palm tree Cocos nucifera, at home along beaches throughout the entire tropical world. Its original homeland is unknown.
At the right, the edible/drinkable nut part of the coconut lies inside the thick, fibrous husk visible in the picture. The enjoy eating or drinking from the nut, the husk must be removed, which can be hard for the unpracticed without a machete.
When you buy a coconut, remember that the quantity of "milk" in it is inversely proportional to the amount of "meat." A coconut with a lot of sweet milk may have almost no meat, but a good, meaty one may be almost dry. If you buy a coconut for drinking, the vendor will cut off the nut's top with a machete, and you can drink the milk through a straw.
We Northerners know what pineapples look like, but they deserve special mention if only because they're so interesting botanically. The edible part of a pineapple is actually greatly thickened, pulpy stem material. The actual fruits, which are berries, are imbedded in this tissue. Pineapple plants are actually bromeliads, which are those agavelike plants you see festooning tree limbs in tropical Mexico; the pineapple plant is native to the American tropics and, unlike most other bromeliads, grows on the ground. The best way to judge whether a pineapple is ready to eat is by smelling for its mellow, sweet odor.