Green Hour challenge 7

We did this challenge already more than a week ago but I've been lazy with posting lately... This challenge was called field guide but instead we did a field trip! Talking about slightly modifying the task... :)

We visited some relatives in the countryside (there are more pictures in my photo blog) and got to see some new plants as well as some old favourites.

My sister-in-law has two rows of pineapple (ananas comosus) growing and the first ones should be ripe very soon. So we didn't get to taste any but the kids liked the way pineapple grows - they had never seen the plant before.

I learned later on that the Portuguese name for pineapple, abacaxi, comes from an Indian language called Tupi. They call it ibacati which means "smelly fruit" (iba = fruit and cati = to have a strong smell).

I thought I hadn't seen this fruit before but when I tasted it I realised I had eaten it in Costa Rica many many years ago. It's called ingá-cipó in Portuguese and apparently in English it's called ice-crem-bean :) The Latin name for this is inga edulis. It wasn't quite ripe yet but we tasted some anyhow. You can eat the fruit around the large seeds.

And then there was our old favourite manioc (manihot esculenta) that we also have plenty of in our own back yard.

We saw lots of other plants too but these were the kids' favourites.