On a recent warm May day, bundles of small sun-kissed-colored fruit droop from a towering tree in Raffy Espiritu’s backyard in Milpitas. They soak in the light and ripen in the heat before suddenly splitting from the branches at the slightest tug of Espiritu’s hand.
At first glance, the harvest looks like a puzzling mixture of familiar fruits — the color of a mango, the shape of a baby apricot, the texture of a ripe peach. Peel off the paper-thin skin and take a bite, and the flesh is an even more mysterious combination of flavors: tangy, tart, sweet.
“It’s beautiful, the fruit and the leaves of the tree,” Espiritu said. “It’s very, very awesome.”
Meet the loquat: a large evergreen shrub that bears dozens of bulb-shaped orange fruit in the late spring and early summer. Loquats are native to China and popular in subtropical regions worldwide, including Asia and Latin America. In California, the trees thrive off the Bay Area’s mild and temperate climate…