Redfruit

Known Location

Southern, Nerat, High Reaches Hold, Nabol, Igen

Growth form:

Fruit Tree

Uses:

Edible, made into cider and brandy.

Outside Info:

Trees are also used for their wood. A native red fruit was listed in Dragonsdawn. According to Anne in the Kitchen Table forum, that redfruits are like a juicy plumb. There is probably a similar taste/appearance to Terran apples, since Sorka thought of apples when she ate one.

Additional Info

Fruit of a tree that goes by the same name. Redfruit grows freely all over Pern, but more luscious in tropical regions. It is found for certain on the Southern Continent, in Nerat, High Reaches, Nabol and Igen. The fruit itself is edible and it is also used to make a redfruit cider and even brandy. The wood of the trees is also used. The redfruit is indigenous, a native to Pern. The idea that a redfruit might (have a variety that) tastes after a Terran apple, found in Menai's list of Pern plants, is probably a misunderstanding of a text in Dragonsdawn: "As she trotted along the beach, she ate the red fruit, discarding the blemished side where a mold had gotten at it, just as she had once eaten windfall apples and thrown away the brown bits back on Earth." This does not indicate anything about taste, merely that Sorka discarded the blemished parts as she had with windfall apples on Earth. In chat (on the former Kitchen Table Live chat that was a part of Anne McCaffrey's website in the period 2000-2005) Anne McCaffrey herself said that redfruit is like "a juicy plum" (which doesn't rule out the taste of apple of course). Unlike a Terran plum, the consistency of the peel of a redfruit however must be more like Terran citrus fruit as we read in The White Dragon that Menolly bites "into redfruit peel, tearing off a large chunk and squeezing the pulp for the juice", which, accordingly to Menolly "tastes heavenly" (which is an odd thing to remark on a planet without religion, or is this a remnant of "colonist language"...). This, and other instances, makes clear that he fruit is very juicy and can be squeezed like a Terran orange to produce juice that is preferably consumed cool. From the same book we also learn that the fruit grows on a stem, in clusters and that the tree must be relatively large tree because Jaxom is able to "collapse at the base of a redfruit tree" while later he jumps to catch a low hanging branch to swing himself up and climb the tree. Redfruit can be seen as one of the most common, cheap and easily available fruits on Pern since Pona, when served redfruit in the Harper Hall remarks: "oh, not redfruit again?" in Dragonsinger. What Anne McCaffrey means when she writes that the fruit is "curiously shaped" in the same book, remains unknown. We also learn that redfruit is one of Menolly's favourites. That a redfruit definitely isn't a reddish orange might be established from a remark made by Piemur when he finds he has been transported from Nabol Hold to Southern: "But first, something to eat: more orange fruit and redfruit, which seemed to grow in profusion". [WD, DSinger, Ddrums, DDawn, KTL chat Nov/Dec 2000].