When the Whole Community Was Our Orchard

The other night, my wife and I found ourselves remembering the fruits of our childhood.

One name brought out another. Camachile. Tieza. Pomelo. Guyabano. Guava. Abyang. Mango. Aratiles. Balimbing. Kaimito. Duhat. Siniguelas. Mabolo. Mulberry. Sampalok. Pias.

Soon, we were no longer merely naming fruits. We were rebuilding an entire community as it once appeared—with tall trees beside houses, branches extending over open land, seasonal fruits hanging within sight and children who knew exactly where to find them.

Decades later, many of those trees are gone.

More houses now occupy the spaces where they once grew. Families expanded, land became more valuable, and open areas were gradually claimed for new homes. The change was understandable, perhaps even unavoidable.

Yet every new structure seemed to take the place of a tree, a patch of ground or a small corner where something edible had once grown freely.

Only after returning did we realize how much had disappeared.

An orchard without fences

We never called our community an orchard.

There were no entrance gates, organized rows or signs identifying the trees. Nobody handed us a basket and invited us to pick fruit. The trees were simply part of the neighbourhood.

A camachile tree might grow in one place, its curling pods holding soft white or pinkish flesh around shiny black seeds. Somewhere else stood a guava, pomelo or guyabano tree. Mango trees rose above roofs and offered shade long before their fruits were ready.

Aratiles grew almost anywhere. Their small red fruits were easy to overlook from a distance, but children knew how to spot the ripe ones. Kaimito waited behind glossy leaves, while balimbing hung like little lanterns with five distinct ridges.

When duhat season came, the trees could be extraordinarily generous. The fruits arrived in such abundance that purple-stained fingers and tongues seemed to become part of the season.

Siniguelas had its own following. Some fruits were eaten while still firm and sharply flavoured; others were allowed to soften and sweeten.

No single person had planted all these trees for us. Together, however, they formed a community orchard without fences.

The fruits known by local names

Some fruits were known to us by names that may never have appeared in our schoolbooks.

There was abyang, borne in clusters by a palm. Each fruit was around the size of a marble. Its outer portion was so thick that it seemed to occupy almost half the fruit, leaving only a small amount of flesh inside. Sometimes that flesh was bitter.

We ate it anyway.

Perhaps that small act says something about childhood. A fruit did not have to be perfectly sweet, seedless or convenient. It only had to be there, growing within reach and recognized by the other children.

There was also tieza, another name carrying the language of the community that used it. Local names held practical knowledge: where a plant grew, when it fruited, what it tasted like and whether it was worth climbing for.

These names deserve to be remembered even when their scientific identities are uncertain. A local name is not an inferior name. It is a vessel carrying a community’s relationship with a plant.

When such a name disappears, we lose more than a word.

The branch filled with fruit

One remembered tree produced fruits in clusters. They began green, turned red and finally became black when ripe.

We climbed the tree and reached for the branches carrying the heaviest bunches. Sometimes, instead of picking the fruits individually, we broke off the whole fruiting branch and brought it down.

Today, that sounds careless. A gardener would think about the health and future shape of the tree. Children thought only about the fruit in front of them.

The tree appeared so tall and productive that we could not imagine our small harvest making any difference. It seemed permanent, as many things do in childhood.

Now, remembering how few such trees remain, permanence no longer feels certain.

Mulberries were also part of the local landscape. Their fruits changed colour as they ripened, and a tree in season could tempt children and birds alike.

Long before I grew mulberries on a high-rise balcony, they were already part of the remembered abundance of home.

Sourness in a bowl

Not every childhood fruit was sweet.

One of the most memorable was a small yellow fruit, about the size of a marble. It had deep ridges and looked like a miniature beefsteak tomato. Inside was a small seed surrounded by flesh so sour that eating it became almost a test of endurance.

It was likely karmay, also known as star gooseberry.

We placed the fruits in a bowl, sprinkled them with salt and shook them together. The salt drew out some of the juice and spread the sourness over every surface.

Then we ate.

We continued until our mouths could hardly tolerate another one. Nobody had to organize a sour-fruit challenge for us. We had already invented our own.

The pleasure was partly in the flavour and partly in sharing the experience. One person reached for another fruit, so everyone else did the same. The sourness made us wince, but the bowl continued to empty.

That memory would be difficult to reproduce with fruit selected for uniform sweetness and sold inside a sealed package. Its flavour belonged to the tree, the season, the salt and the company gathered around the bowl.

The trees that supplied the sourness

Sourness did not always come from a packet or bottle. It grew on trees.

Sampalok was eaten at almost every stage. The unripe fruit was very sour, but that did not prevent us from eating it raw. As it matured, the pulp became sour-sweet. Some varieties were remarkably sweet, with hardly any sharpness remaining.

The trees varied, too. Some grew much taller than others.

The fruit was only part of what sampalok provided. Its tender leaves could be boiled with a goat’s head or other portions to make sinampalukan, giving the dish its characteristic natural sourness.

Then there was pias, known elsewhere as kamias or bilimbi.

Its elongated green fruits emerged in clusters directly from the trunk and larger branches. Each fruit was only about four or five centimetres long, yet it carried tremendous sourness.

Pias could be used to flavour fish, soups and other dishes requiring acidity. It was also something children might dare to eat raw, especially when salt was available.

These trees were not merely sources of seasonal snacks. They were part of the community kitchen. One tree could offer a childhood treat, a souring ingredient and the defining flavour of a family dish.

The tall mabolo tree

Then there was mabolo.

The tree grew tall, and its large fruits wore reddish skin that we peeled away. Inside were large seeds surrounded by edible flesh. To a child looking up from the ground, some of those fruits seemed almost as large as pomelos.

Mabolo had a character unlike the polished imported fruits that appeared in stores.

In our community, it was sometimes eaten because people believed it helped remove intestinal worms. We also ate it on ordinary days, without waiting for a particular reason.

That deworming use belongs to the traditional health knowledge of the community. It is best remembered as a household practice rather than presented as proven medical treatment.

What can be stated more confidently is that mabolo is a nourishing fruit containing fibre and several vitamins and minerals.

We did not discuss it in those terms then. We did not talk about dietary fibre, micronutrients or plant compounds.

We ate mabolo because it grew there, because our elders regarded it as useful and because it was part of life.

We did not need Christmas pears

Imported fruits felt special because they were unfamiliar.

Pears, for example, were fruits we usually encountered around Christmas. Their rarity gave them a certain prestige. They arrived from somewhere else, often carefully packed and displayed as part of the holiday season.

But rarity and distance do not automatically make a fruit more nourishing.

We already had mangoes, guavas, pomelos, guyabano, aratiles, duhat, siniguelas, kaimito, balimbing, mabolo and many others. Together, these local fruits contributed fibre and a wide range of vitamins, minerals and natural plant compounds to everyday diets.

No single fruit supplied everything the body needed, and fruit alone did not sustain the community’s health. Our nourishment also came from vegetables, rice, fish, root crops and other foods.

Still, the diversity of locally available produce made an important contribution. We did not need to wait for an imported pear to receive the benefits of eating fruit.

Our own trees were already laden with nourishment.

They were not lesser fruits or substitutes for something better. They belonged to our climate, our soil, our seasons and our tables.

They were enough.

The abundance we thought would remain

As children, we did not think much about ownership, land conversion or conservation.

We knew which trees bore fruit and which branches could support our weight. We knew when duhat was in season, where aratiles could be found and how much salt to put into a bowl of karmay.

We knew that some fruits would be sweet, some sour and some slightly bitter.

What we did not know was that the landscape itself could change.

A vacant space became a house. Another house followed. Old trees were cut because their roots, shade or falling leaves no longer fitted the new arrangement. Some died without being replaced. Children stopped learning the local names because the plants attached to those names were no longer around.

The disappearance was gradual. No single day marked the end of the community orchard.

One simply returned after decades and noticed the absences.

The camachile was no longer in its old place. The tall mabolo could not be found. The open land had narrowed. Branches once heavy with seasonal fruit had been replaced by roofs, walls and concrete.

The community was still there, but its edible landscape had grown quieter.

What the trees gave us

Those trees gave us more than vitamins and minerals.

They gave children reasons to go outdoors. They taught us to observe colour and ripeness. A green fruit was not ready. A red one was getting close. A black one needed to be reached before the birds found it.

They taught patience, even if we did not always practise it.

They gave us flavours that were not standardized: sweetness mixed with tartness, bitterness hiding inside a small palm fruit, or sourness strong enough to make everyone around a bowl react at once.

They also gave us a kind of shared wealth. A fruiting tree could feed more than the household beside it. Its branches extended into the visual and social life of the neighbourhood. Everyone knew when it was in season.

The abundance was partly in the number of trees. It was also in the knowledge shared by the people living among them.

Content with what grew around us

We did not have every fruit in the world.

Strawberries did not grow freely in our community. Pears and certain other imported fruits appeared mainly during Christmas. They attracted attention because they came from somewhere distant.

But we had mangoesStrawberries did not grow freely in our community. Pears and certain other imported fruits appeared mainly during Christmas. They attracted attention because they came from somewhere distant.

. We had guavas, pomelos and guyabano. We had aratiles, kaimito and balimbing. We had duhat in astonishing abundance when its season arrived. We had siniguelas, camachile, tieza, abyang, mabolo, sampalok, pias and mulberries.

Some were sweet. Some were sour. Some were bitter, yet we ate them anyway.

We climbed for them, gathered them, shook them with salt and shared them. We ate what was ripe and waited for the next tree to enter its season.

We did not think of our community as an orchard.

We simply thought of it as home.

For what grew around us was enough.

We were content—and we were happy.