Martinique, an island with many tropical fruit

Martinique offers many tropical fruit well known for most metropolitans. A brief overview of these fruits by rental car ....

During your stay, traveling, car hire, do not hesitate one second to taste tropical fruits that you will find on the markets or on the roadside.

The Martinique markets offer a wide variety of banana used to decorate many local specialties; rum with vegetable dishes through fruit salads and yogurts. Europcar has decided to tell you a little about these tropical flavors you'll be asked to taste.

Banana, more than just fruit

Bananas growing on banana, native to Asia, it has quickly become the reference plant in Martinique, before the sugar cane. We distinguish more than 400 varieties of bananas that are not all edible, represented mainly by bananas desserts regarded as fruit and cooking bananas treated as vegetables. Despite its appearance, the banana is not a tree but a giant plant that reaches up to 10 meters high in some varieties. The "banana dessert" has for the first time after about 9 months, the following cycles are shorter than 2 months. The duration of a plan is in theory unlimited. Each leg can carry a single plan, it is cut at harvest, it is a rejection that will provide the next fruiting.

The fruit is harvested still green because it is the cut that triggers maturity. The plastic bags that are identified in the fields and covering each bunch of bananas remain very intriguing to tourists, they actually serve to protect against rain, pests and birds. These include banana Fraissinette thin-skinned and yellow-orange flesh is deliciously fruity. The fig apple, short and stocky with a sour taste resembling that of the apple, it consumes very mature. The "ti nain" which is eaten as a vegetable green or ripe for dessert, it is she that is exported to Europe. The banana has replaced sugar cane and is the first export product (300 000 t / year).

No wonder, when riding in a rental car, meet bunches of bananas for kilometers and kilometers, especially on the Atlantic north coast of the island.

The banana museum in Sainte Marie

An interesting museum dedicated to this fruit which occupies a privileged site will teach you all the secrets. It will move, in a rental car, towards the town of Sainte Marie northeast of the island, admiring the landscape are flooded banana before reaching Housing Limbe banana farm that has converted part its museum area.

The pineapple, a fruit 'imported' from our neighbors

It is native to South America. Columbus discovered during his second voyage in 1493, in an Indian village in Guadeloupe pineapple plantations. The Indians of South America have long cultivated and it was introduced in Martinique 50 years later. Today there are more than 510 hectares are devoted to the production of this fruit. The largest farms are located in the municipalities of the North Atlantic as Ajoupa Bouillon, Basse Pointe, or the Lorrain.

By rental car during your journey to discover the island, you find themselves in one of these towns, you will remain pleasantly surprised by the whole pineapple fields because, no, do not look in the trees, it is the soil they grow !!!, that is a perennial plant that gives a fruit for which it will take between 14 and 18 months between planting and first harvest. This is breaking the head of the pineapple to put the earth that we will have a new fruit. The varieties in Martinique are: pineapple "Hawaii", the best known and most cultivated in Martinique, its golden yellow very juicy flesh is sweet to the palate. "The son of calvet" is grown especially on the side of Ajoupa Bouillon "and finally," Smooth Cayenne "big size can exceed 2 kg, it is orange at maturity, golden yellow flesh, it is exquisite! !!!

Coconut, tropical tree

This is the fruit that we spontaneously associate in Martinique, symbolic snapshot of any postcard, the coconut trees are everywhere. By rental car, you can cross the island, passing through the villages, hills, beaches, roads, they are part of the landscape, to remind you that you are "in the tropics, you are not dreaming !! ! where coconut is king. No need to cultivate, it grows by itself. the fruit of the coconut (coconut) may be green, yellow or orange, the water that is inside is very precious because it is rare and difficult to maintain, so to operate, but drank on the spot, it is refreshing and thirst quenching.

When the coconut is not too young, you can enjoy after having emptied of water that can be drunk, a more or less thick layer of cream that is on the inner walls the "nan nan" this same cream that becomes coconut after hardening. The nut is enclosed in a yellow husk, green or orange which turns brown as it dries. By rental car, take the time to pause, if you encounter on the edge of the roads leading to beaches, street vendors in tarpaulin car, filled with coconut clusters, they will share a unique experience to taste a drink quite local, and soft !!! you only find there.

Mango, picking up on roadsides.

There is a huge variety of mangos (name in Creole) the julie, bassignac, mangotin, size and different taste. Mango has a yellow-orange flesh, more or less fibrous varieties depending on which is a bit like that of fishing, and a large nucleus whose shape recalls the cuttlefish bone. It can be enjoyed as is, sorbet into juice, jam and sometimes when green salad. The mango is a must julie mango, its subtle flavor and the fact that it is not at all fibrous make the most delicious mangoes. Mango trees are still represented in large quantities on the island. If you are lucky enough to find yourself on holiday in Martinique at the right time, you can rest stops by rental car to pick these fruits that fall from the mango trees on the roadside, simply stoop to pick them up.

Many other exotic fruits from Martinique are known and yet to be discovered