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 FruitHere are relevant references from the Books where fruit is mentioned. I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. Arrive at your own conclusions. I wish you well, Fogaban Fruit Iron Fruit Larma Hard Melon Plum Pomegranate Tospit
I knew enough of the forest within the wands to recognize many things outside them which might be eaten; leafy Tur-Pah, parasitic on Tur trees, of course, but, too, certain plants whose roots were edible, as the wild Sul; and there were flat ground pods in tangles which I could tear open, iron fruit whose shells might be broken between rocks, and autumn gim berries, purple and juicy, perhaps named for the bird, whose cast fruit lies under the snow, the seeds surviving until spring, when one in a thousand might germinate. Smugglers of Gor Book 32 Page 243
He then picked up a juicy, red larma fruit, biting into it with a sound that seemed partly crunching as he went through the shell, partly squishing as he bit into the fleshy, segmented endocarp. He seemed to make a great deal of noise. Nomads of Gor Book 4 Page 220 "And put bread over the fire," I said, "and honey, and the eggs of vulos, and fried tarsk meat and a Torian larma fruit." I looked upwards, and about the room. The multicolored ribbons were festive; the lamps were lovely; and the flowers, abundant and colorful, mostly larma blossoms, Veminia and Teriotrope, were beautiful and fragrant. Lola had done well. "Apparently," said Boots, "you are under the delusion that this is a free woman, one that may simply be picked up, like a larma in a field, for whatever purposes you might please." The larma does not grow naturally in Torvaldsland, but certain hard fruits do, which, happily, will serve a similar purpose.
I took a slice of hard larma from my tray. This is a firm, single-seeded, applelike fruit. It is quite unlike the segmented, juicy larma. It is sometimes called, and perhaps more aptly, the pit fruit, because of its large single stone. I held it up so that he could see it. The urt people, I understood, were fond of pit fruit. Indeed, it was for having stolen such fruit from a state orchard that he had been incarcerated. Players of Gor Book 20 Page 267
At the oasis will be grown a hybrid, brownish Sa-Tarna, adapted to the heat of the desert; most Sa-Tarna is yellow; and beans, berries, onions tuber suls, various sorts of melons, a foliated leaf vegetable, called Katch, and various root vegetables, such as turnips, carrots, radishes, of the sphere and cylinder varieties, and korts, a large, brownish-skinned, thick-skinned, sphere-shaped vegetable, usually some six inches in width, the interior of which is yellowish, fibrous and heavily seeded. At the oasis, because of the warm climate, the farmers can grow two or more crops a year. Tribesmen of Gor Book 10 Page 37 The vendors come early to the market, leaving their villages outside of Tor in the morning darkness, that they may find a yard of pavement, preferably near the market gate, to display their wares. I was jostled to one side by two men in djellabas. My ankle stung. I had nearly stepped into a basket of plums. Not even looking up, a woman had cried out, and, with a stick lashed out, protecting her merchandise. "Buy melons!" called a fellow next to her, lifting one of the yellowish, red-striped spheres toward me. Tribesmen of Gor Book 10 Page 45 We did hear a man calling outside, selling melons. We heard two kaiila plod by, their bells.
From the garment, to the sand about her ankles, there fell several small Gorean plums, a small larma fruit and two silver tarsks. The girl lifted her head then and, timidly, lifted the ripe, rounded fruit which she held in her hands, Gorean peaches and plums, to me.
I distended my nostrils, screening the scents of the room. I rejected the smell of moldy straw, of wastes. From outside I could smell date palms, pomegranates. "Pomegranate orchards lie at the east of the oasis." I said. "Gardens lie inward. There is even a pond, between two of the groves of date palms." "True," said Hassan. "There is Red Rock," I said. "No," said Hassan. It was the next day, at the eleventh Ahn, one Ahn past the Gorean noon, that we arrived at the Oasis of Red Rock. It was dominated by the kasbah of its pasha, Turem a'Din, commander of the local Tashid clans, on its rim to the northeast. There were five palm groves. At the east of the oasis lay pomegranate orchards. Toward its lower parts, in its center, were the gardens. Between two of the groves of date palms there was a large pool.
On the back of the kaiila, the black lance in hand, bending down in the saddle, I raced past a wooden wand fixed in the earth, on the top of which was placed a dried tospit, a small, wrinkled, yellowish-white peachlike fruit, about the size of a plum, which grows on the tospit bush, patches of which are indigenous to the drier valleys of the western Cartius. They are bitter but edible. This afternoon Kamchak and I, leading four pack kaiila, had entered the first gate of nine-gated Turia. He looked at me shrewdly and, to my surprise, drew a tospit out of his pouch, that yellowish-white, bitter fruit, looking something like a peach but about the size of a plum. He threw me the tospit. "Odd or even?" he asked. I had resolved not to wager with Kamchak, but this was indeed an opportunity to gain a certain amount of vengeance which, on my part, would be sorely appreciated. Usually, in guessing tospit seeds, one guesses the actual number, and usually both guessers opt for an odd number. The common tospit almost invariably has an odd number of seeds. On the other hand the rare, long-stemmed tospit usually has an even number of seeds. Both fruits are indistinguishable outwardly. I could see that, perhaps by accident, the tospit which Kamchak had thrown me had had the stem twisted off. It must be then, I surmised, the rare, long-stemmed tospit. "Most tospits," Kamchak informed me, "have an odd number of seeds." "I know," I said. "Then why did you guess even?" he asked. "I supposed," I grumbled, "that you would have found a long-stemmed tospit." "But they are not available," he said, "until late in the summer." "It is the season for tospits," she said, "I was sent there to assess their quality, for this early in the season." |       
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