Carpophagous

The grapes have ripened and fallen, as we failed to harvest them this year. Our apples and peaches have suffered the same fate. The persimmons still have a chance to be harvested, though. I just, honestly, don’t know what to do with persimmons. They look like little plums, but colored more like peaches or apricots. And they taste like I don’t know what. Because if I’ve had one, I don’t remember. My wife tasted one when the garden center guy talked her into buying the tree, so I guess they must taste good.

Maybe a persimmon pie would be a good choice, since I’m a big fan of fruit in baked goods. But that might be because I am a big fan of baked goods in general. Did you know that a popular honey and nut flavored oat cereal has more sugar than cookies? Or, at least the cookies I had on hand to compare. If I had known that when I was a child… well, it probably wouldn’t have made any difference, since we always had plenty of cookies we were allowed to eat. But I digress.

Fruit is nature’s candy, and one of the more pleasant things to eat right off the plant. Apples and peaches and Concord grapes (and maybe persimmons) are pretty much exactly the same when you eat them off the tree/vine as when you pull them out of a lunch bag or out of a fruit basket. No need for grinding or cooking or even peeling, though all of those things are also fine.

Some creatures eat fruit as their primary or only source of food, so I guess they’d be nature’s sweet tooth animals. Fruit bats and some monkeys come to mind, though I’m sure there are people living primarily on fruit, as well. They would all be described as carpophagous. Carpo was a Greek goddess of summer fruit, and phagus comes from the Greek for glutton. I actually find that mildly amusing, don’t you?