I've often thought while eating avocados or dates or olives, how different it would be if they didn't exist. There are some fruits that are so uniquely distinct.
And then I wonder how much we're missing out on fruits lost long ago. Like, what if there could have been something else so wonderful as an avocado, in its completely own other way?
Or fruits that still exist that we don't really know about. There are 3800 different types of potatoes in Peru apparently. Why can we only get like 7?
Also, seems like Asian countries all have their distinct version of aspergillus oryzae that they've domesticated, how many others are there waiting out there to dramatically change the taste of food.
In Australia when I was a kid there were basically just one or two types of potatoes (other than the 'washed', 'unwashed', and 'young' varieties).
However going to Tasmania... there's dozens, maybe hundreds of varieties that you can't get outside the state.
It's the same with a bunch of things down there - apples, for instance - there's a huge variety of them that are available for maybe 2 weeks in a year, grown on a handful of small farms. Miss that window and you have to wait for the next year.
I live in Australia and the diversity of bush-tucker is absolutely amazing! Tons of strange tomatoes (bush-tomatoes), of course kangaroo meat, quandong, kakadu fruit, kutjera, bunya nut etc. Except for kangaroo meat you can't get these in the supermarket here either, there's no industry growing them on a large scale due to cultural and sometimes religious reasons.
Pascoe's Dark Emu or Gammage's Biggest Estate on Earth (less fought about) are good reads in that area.
An apple that quince? :-)
Look at the blue flower in the hand of the child...
She need to look at the picture in its own cultural and symbolic context. Quince, or pear quince, is a fruit associated with fertility