Books:  

Of bananas, pineapples and stuff that go plop

Our little tropical isle, Sri Lanka, is blessed with numerous varieties of fruits. But not everyone knows from where the plant originally came, nor its scientific name or how to identify the fruit plants. To fill that need, one would, compulsively be tempted to acquire a most pleasant book titled ‘A selection of Fruits of Sri Lanka’.

Originally published by WHT Publications back in 1997, its popularity and continued demand by led to its second edition, which was released to the book stores in 2008.

The scientific names have been updated to match current international databases. This hard cover publication has maintained the same colorful layout of its 70 pages.

It may surprise many, that not all fruit plants that grow in Sri Lanka are actually native to this country. In fact of the 85 fruit producing species described in this book, only a fraction is truly native. Of these, five species are endemic (found only in Sri Lanka). These are wild date, ‘gal veera’, Ceylon gooseberry and two species of ‘goraka’. Many species have been introduced from other countries down the ages.

Did you know that the popular pineapple is a native of tropical America? On the other hand banana is native to southern Asia from where it was introduced to tropical America. Have you tasted ‘hondapara’ (elephant apple) or its drink? Ever enjoyed ‘masan’, ‘gaduguda’ or ‘villuda’? There seems to be lots more interesting fruits than the popular lovi, ugurassa and veralu. All these interesting bits of data have been gathered and set out in this book for the convenience of its readers.

The book is in a user friendly format and gives the English, Sinhala and Tamil, as well as the scientific name for each fruit plant featured.

This is followed by the description of the fruit bearing plants and then by the description of the fruit and its taste. While most details required by a wide readership is covered in the text, it is easily digestible! The text is well supported by the pleasing colour illustrations, which make identification easy.

‘A Selection of Fruits of Sri Lanka’, the only illustrated guide to the fruits of Sri Lanka is authored by the husband and wife team Jayaindra and Thivanshi Fernando. Jayaindra is a consultant surgeon working in the private sector in Colombo. In fact, the lovely water color illustrations that adorn the book were done in between Jayaindra’s postgraduate training back in 1995.

Thivanshi is an IT professional. Together they travelled widely in the country, in search of genuine data to gather, as well as fresh specimens to paint.

Thivanshi has taken care to base her research on accepted and published literary sources, which have been verified by her travels and the collection of fresh specimens. It is for this reason of authenticity that the book has become popular among a wide sector of readers including nature lovers, botanists, agriculturists, tourists, students or simply lovers of fruits or Sri Lanka it self. The book is available at the leading book stores.

-C.A.