Hopes of indigenes of a small town of Wiamoase in the Ashanti Region have been massively dashed after a supposed apple tree growing in the town turned out to be a mere fig.
Ghanaian social media was thrown into a frenzy when a viral post claimed the highly-prized fruit was growing in Ghana. The excitement was due to the fact that apples, an expensive fruit in Africa are generally known to be fruits that thrive in temperate regions and not in the hot tropical climate like Ghana.
The tree that was supposedly planted five years ago by a now-deceased girl was all over traditional and social media in Ghana in the past two days.
Unfortunately, when experts examined the fruit, it was turned out to be a specie of fig, a fruit which is inedible and is in the gourd family.
A Senior Lecturer at the Department of Horticulture of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) said the physical characteristics of the tree comes nowhere near apple or even pear.
Dr Irene Idan confirmed this to Kumasi-based Luv FM, saying there was nothing to be excited about in what is available at Wiamoase.
“The leaves don’t resemble that of apples, also the skin of an apple is very smooth but this is rough. When we cut the fruit, its internal formation doesn’t resemble an apple,” she explained.
“The apple has thick mesocarp with long peduncle with seeds attached to it and that’ll be sitting in the pericarp…It’s more of a fig than an apple,” she concluded.