Regions: South India

The kokum of the Konkan — a slim tree with fruit that makes the summer drink.

Sour fruit straight off the trunk, in constant supply on the wet coasts.

Fruit inside a year from seed — the fastest fruit a household can grow.

A single sucker in a corner gives shade, cooking leaves and, in time, fruit.

A small deccan tree that fruits on very little water and poor soil.

A thorny slow tree of dry country with a hard-shelled sour fruit.

Yellow bells almost all year on a shrub that survives a forgotten terrace.

A spiny yellow-flowered shrub of dry scrub, unbothered by heat or thin soil.

The abolí of southern flower markets — orange fans, picked daily.

Curtains of orange through the cool months on a big pergola.