Stone fruits

Dried and shriveled plums are known as prunes.

These red fruits usually grow in pairs on a single, short stem.

Green and unripe, this fruit tastes like an apple but then turns purple and sweet like a date.

Fuzzy skin protects the easily bruised flesh of this fruit.

Hard and bitter, olives are processed before eating, or pressed for their oil.

The large, round seed makes up 80 percent of the berry’s interior.

This flat, oval seed can grow up to 2¾ in (7 cm) long and is tricky to cut out.

These thin-skinned, firm, often fleshy fruits, with a single, hard seed at the center, are known as drupes or, more commonly, stone fruits. Many have been cultivated from wild trees to produce bigger, juicier fruits.

The green, unripe fruit can be eaten before the almond inside hardens.

The sweet fruits of the hardy date palm have been a vital source of food for desert peoples for thousands of years. Delicious fresh, they can also be dried and stored for longer periods of time. The sweet, juicy flesh of peaches is delicious and is eaten fresh, though some people don’t like

These small, slightly sour fruits are used to make preserves and flavor spirits.

The hard, wrinkled stone protects an almond-shaped seed.

This fragrant fruit is eaten both fresh and dried.

Date palms can produce up to 310 lb (140 kg) of fruit each year.

These high-growing fruits are picked with the help of ropes, ladders, or cherry-picker trucks.

The pulp of this bitter fruit is used to make jams.

its fuzzy skin and prefer its smooth relative, the nectarine. Some stone fruits are not sweet but sour—the sloe must be cooked up with lots of sugar. The flesh of olives is hard as well as bitter. But when crushed in a press, a greenish-gold oil can be extracted. Some stone fruits, such

as almonds, are grown for their edible seeds rather than their flesh. Some people do eat whole unripe green almonds, which are fuzzy, crunchy, and tart, with a soft, jelly-filled seed.