Fruits & Vegetables-Fri ek legim

When the first fifteen settlers from Réunion Island arrived at Ste Anne Island on board the Thélémaque on 27th august 1770, they carried with them a selection of seeds and plant material for them to start their fruit and vegetable garden. When the Chevalier du Roslan of the L’Etoile du Berger and the Chevalier d’Hercé of the L’Etoile du Matin visited Seychelles in January 1771, they reported to Mr Brayer de Barré that the garden was very successful. He consequently wrote to  the Duc de Praslin, who was then the French Minister for the colonies, to report the successes. He wrote: “…rice and maize are flourishing perfectly, as well as manioc and all kinds of vegetables. The seeds from the Ile de France, especially the coffee, have surpassed all exceptions…”. In fact the success was mainly attributed to Pierre Poivre who, not only supplied the seeds and the plant material, but also gave guidance to Delaunay, who was the commandant of the settlers, on how to grow the produce. Pierre Poivre, a horticulturalist and botanist, was at that time the Administrator Intendant of Isle de France (now Mauritius) and Isle Bourbon ( now Réunion). Since then, other plant materials and seeds were gradually introduced to the new colony.

Although the steep, wooded mountains of the Seychelles’ inner islands and the sandy soil of the coral islands provide only limited scope for large scale agricultural practices, the locals have learned how to make the best of the country’s long hours of sunshine and plentiful rainfall to grow a wide variety of both tropical and more traditional fruits and vegetables. Traditionally, most households had a small backyard garden or bitasyon where they would grow vegetables like tomatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, cassava, cabbage, watercress, chillis, snake and bitter gourd, bananas and many more. They would also have fruit trees like golden apple, mangoes, jackfruit, breadfruit, oranges, lemons and bilimbi. Unfortunately, due to the lack of space, shortage of time and petty theft the backyard gardens are sadly slowly disappearing.

The islands are blessed with many fruits but most of the trees are not pruned and therefore grow too tall and consequently make picking of the fruits either a very risky process or they are just not picked at all. Consequently, the fruits either fall to the ground and get bruised or are consumed by the fruit bats.

Some fruits are available year round, like lemons, oranges and bananas, whereas others like mangoes, breadfruits, pineapple and avocado are seasonal and in most cases the trees would bear twice a year.

In this section, I have tried to give a brief description of some of the local fruits and vegetables that are used by the Creole cook. All you need to do is to click on the one you would like to learn or  know more about…