The Fruit and Spice Park is a 37 acres (15 ha) botanical garden

Botanical garden

A botanical garden The terms botanic and botanical, and garden or gardens are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word botanic is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is a well-tended area displaying a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names...

 in metropolitan

Miami-Dade County, Florida

Miami-Dade County is a county located in the southeastern part of the state of Florida. As of 2010 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 2,496,435, making it the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States...

 Miami at 24801 SW 187 Avenue, located in the rural

Rural

Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...

 agricultural community of the Redland

Redland, Florida

Redland, sometimes pluralized The Redlands, is an agricultural community in metropolitan Miami, Florida, United States, about southwest of Downtown Miami. Many farms, original clapboard homes of early settlers, u-pick'em fields and coral rock walls dot the landscape. It is named for the red clay...

, Florida, United States.

Exhibits

The park contains more than 500 varieties of fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

, nut

Nut (fruit)

A nut is a hard-shelled fruit of some plants having an indehiscent seed. While a wide variety of dried seeds and fruits are called nuts in English, only a certain number of them are considered by biologists to be true nuts...

, and spice

Spice

A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, or vegetative substance used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for flavor, color, or as a preservative that kills harmful bacteria or prevents their growth. It may be used to flavour a dish or to hide other flavours...

 trees, including 80 plus banana

Banana

Banana is the common name for herbaceous plants of the genus Musa and for the fruit they produce. Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple, and red....

 varieties, 125 varieties of mango

Mango

The mango is a fleshy stone fruit belonging to the genus Mangifera, consisting of numerous tropical fruiting trees in the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae. The mango is native to India from where it spread all over the world. It is also the most cultivated fruit of the tropical world. While...

, more than 40 varieties of grape

Grape

A grape is a non-climacteric fruit, specifically a berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or they can be used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, molasses and grape seed oil. Grapes are also...

s, 70 bamboo

Bamboo

Bamboo is a group of perennial evergreens in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family....

 varieties, plus guava

Guava

Guavas are plants in the myrtle family genus Psidium , which contains about 100 species of tropical shrubs and small trees. They are native to Mexico, Central America, and northern South America...

, jackfruit

Jackfruit

The jackfruit is a species of tree in the Artocarpus genus of the mulberry family . It is native to parts of Southern and Southeast Asia. It is the national fruit of Bangladesh, . The jackfruit tree is believed to be indigenous to the southwestern rain forests of India...

, canistel

Canistel

The canistel is an evergreen tree native to southern Mexico and Central America. It is cultivated in other countries, such as Brazil, Taiwan, and Vietnam for its fruit....

, sapodilla

Sapodilla

Manilkara zapota, commonly known as the sapodilla, is a long-lived, evergreen tree native to southern Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. An example natural occurrence is in coastal Yucatan in the Petenes mangroves ecoregion, where it is a subdominant plant species...

, longan

Longan

Dimocarpus longan, commonly known as the longan, is a tropical tree native to South and Southeast Asia, in the Indomalaya ecozone known for its edible fruit.-Vernacular names:The fruit is known as longan or longyan in English...

, lychee

Lychee

The lychee is the sole member of the genus Litchi in the soapberry family, Sapindaceae. It is a tropical and subtropical fruit tree native to Southern China and Southeast Asia, and now cultivated in many parts of the world...

, mamey sapote

Mamey sapote

The mamey sapote is a species of tree native to southern Mexico. Today, the tree is cultivated not only in Mexico, but also in Central America, the Caribbean, and South Florida for its fruit, which is commonly eaten in many Latin American countries...

, black sapote

Black sapote

Diospyros digyna, the Black Sapote, is a species of persimmon that is native to eastern Mexico and Central America south to Colombia. Other names include Chocolate Pudding Fruit, Chocolate Persimmon and Zapote Prieto.-Description:Mature trees can grow to over in height and are evergreen. It is...

 ("chocolate pudding fruit"), miracle fruit

Miracle fruit

Synsepalum dulcificum produces berries that, when eaten, cause sour foods subsequently consumed to taste sweet. This effect is due to miraculin, which is used commercially as a sugar substitute. Common names for this species and its berry include miracle fruit and miracle berry...

, jaboticaba, cecropia

Cecropia

Cecropia is a Neotropical genus presently consisting of sixty-one recognized species with a highly distinctive lineage of dioecious trees....

 ("snake fingers"), coffee

Coffee

Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

 beans, and wax jambu, as well as other more exotic edibles. Visitors are free to sample fruits lying on the ground, but are not allowed to pick anything from the trees. Fruits that may be poisonous if not consumed correctly, such as ackee

Ackee

The ackee, also known as the vegetable brain, achee, akee apple or akee is a member of the Sapindaceae , native to tropical West Africa in Cameroon, Gabon, São Tomé and Príncipe, Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.It is...

are fenced for safety.

Facilities

Entrance requires an admission fee but the entrance has a store open to the public where many fruits from the park can be sampled for free. The store does not sell any fruit from the park, only various books and packaged spices, sauces, jams and jellies.

External links

• Friends of Fruit and Spice Park Website
• Miami-Dade County Website for Fruit and Spice Park
• Close-up aerial color photo of Fruit and Spice Park