10 Most Unusual Fruits

 Here are the 10 most weirdest fruits that people actually eat, that we otherwise never would have heard of. Try some !

Snakeskin Fruit

Snakeskin fruit (salak in Bahasa Indonesia and Malay, also called snake fruit), are the fruit of small palm trees. Grown in many countries of Southeast Asia, they are available most of the year. A close-up of the fruit reveals how it got its name: the skin is scaly like a snake's.  They are roughly the size of a small pear, about 15 cm long and 10-15 cm in diameter. The peel is just a millimeter or two thick. And can be dangerous:  a careless fruit peeler , can easily cut a finger on the sharp scales, each one of them like a knife-tip.

Akebia Quinata

Akebia quinata (Chocolate Vine or Five-leaf Akebia) is a shrub that is native to Japan, China and Korea. It grows to 10 metres or more in height and has compound leaves with five leaflets. The inflorescences are clustered in racemes and are chocolate-scented, with three or four sepals. The fruits are sausage-shaped pods which contain edible pulp. The gelatinous placentation are littered with seeds but have a sweet flavor, so they used to be enjoyed by children playing out in the countryside in the olden days in Japan. The rind, with a slight bitter taste, is used as vegetable, e.g., stuffed with ground meat and deep-fried. The vines are traditionally used for basket-weaving.

Screw Pine

Screw Pine (Pandanus fascicularis) is a species of Pandanus native to southern Asia, from southern India east to Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands south of Japan, and south to Indonesia. It is a shrub with fragrant flowers. They are used to extract perfume, aromatic oil (kevda oil) and fragrant distillations (otto) called "keorra-ka-arak". These are stimulant and antispasmodic and are used against headache and rheumatism. The flowers are also used to flavour food; kevda essence is used in numerous Indian sweets like rasgulla, petha (candied gourd or winter squash), rasmalai and burfi, especially in Rajasthan. The flower, however, is reputed to attract snakes.

Passion Fruit

Passiflora edulis is a vine species of passion flower that is native to Paraguay, Brazil and northern Argentina (Corrientes and Misiones provinces, among others). Its common names include passion fruit (UK and US), and passionfruit (Australia and New Zealand), purple granadilla and maracuja. It is cultivated commercially in warmer, frost-free areas for its fruit and is widely grown in India, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, the Caribbean, Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Peru, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, California, Florida, Haiti, Hawaii, Argentina, Australia, East Africa, Mexico, Israel, Costa Rica, Venezuela, South Africa and Portugal. The passion fruit is round to oval, either yellow or dark purple at maturity, with a soft to firm, juicy interior filled with numerous seeds. The fruit is both eaten and juiced; passion fruit juice is often added to other fruit juices to enhance the aroma.

Buddha’s Hand Fruit

Buddha’s hand is a citrus fruit with little real “fruit” to it, being mostly citron scented rind, in the form of awful looking yellow fingers. It is easily the most horrible looking thing bearing the name “Buddha” unless some sick bastard named a rotting carcass after Siddhartha. People don’t generally eat them, because of the lack of actual fruit in it, but they use them to perfume rooms because they put out a pretty powerful citrusy fragrance, however since their pith (the bitter white part of the citrus peel) is actually not bitter, the “fingers” are sometimes cut off and used in fish dishes or salads.

Horned Melon ( Kiwano )

The horned melon (Cucumis metuliferus), also called African horned cucumber or melon, jelly melon, hedged gourd, English tomato, melano, kiwano, or cherie, is an annual vine in the cucumber and melon family. It is considered to be the ancestor of the other cultivated melons. Often known by its nickname in the southeastern United States, blowfish fruit, it is grown for its fruit, which looks like an oval melon with horn-like spines. The fruit of this plant is edible, but it is used as often for decoration as for food. When ripe, it has a yellow-orange skin and a lime green jelly-like flesh with a tart taste, and texture similar to a cucumber. The horned melon is native to Africa, and it is now grown in California, Chile, Australia and New Zealand as well.

Pitaya ( Dragon Fruit )

A pitaya or pitahaya is the fruit of several cactus species, most importantly of the genus Hylocereus (sweet pitayas). These fruits are commonly known as dragon fruit – "fire dragon fruit" and lóng zhū guǒ, "dragon pearl fruit", Vietnamese thanh long meaning "sweet dragon", Indonesian and Malaysian buah naga, "dragon fruit", Lao mark mang gohn for "dragon fruit", and Thai kaeo mangkon (Thai: แก้วมังกร) "dragon crystal". Other vernacular names are strawberry pear or nanettikafruit. In the United States it is also referred to as "pinkberry" due to the pink hue.

Atemoya

The atemoya, Annona × atemoya, is a hybrid of two fruits – the sugar apple (Annona squamosa) and the cherimoya (Annona cherimola) – which are both native to the American tropics. This fruit is popular in Taiwan, where it is known as the "pineapple sugar apple", and due to this name sometimes wrongly believed to be a cross between the sugar apple and the pineapple. In Cuba this fruit is called anón, and in Venezuela chirimorinon. In Palestine and Lebanon, the fruit is called achta and is used in many Lebanese desserts, including ice cream.

Rambutan

The rambutan is a medium-sized tropical tree in the family Sapindaceae. The fruit produced by the tree is also known as "rambutan." It is native to Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, although its precise natural distribution is unknown. It is closely related to several other edible tropical fruits including the lychee, longan, and mamoncillo. It is believed to be native to the Malay Archipelago, from where it spread westwards to Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka and India; eastwards to Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia. The name rambutan is derived from the Indonesian word rambutan, meaning "hairy". In Vietnam, it is called chôm chôm (meaning "messy hair") due to the spines covering the fruit's skin.

Durian

The durian is the fruit of several tree species belonging to the genus Durio and the Malvaceae family (although some taxonomists place Durio in a distinct family, Durionaceae). Widely known and revered in southeast Asia as the "king of fruits", the durian is distinctive for its large size, unique odour, and formidable thorn-covered husk. The fruit can grow as large as 30 centimetres (12 in) long and 15 centimetres (6 in) in diameter, and it typically weighs one to three kilograms (2 to 7 lb). Its shape ranges from oblong to round, the colour of its husk green to brown, and its flesh pale yellow to red, depending on the species.