Welcome to the Tropics
Litchi chinensis·Southern China
The rose-scented summer classic. A pink, knobbled shell cracks under a thumbnail to release translucent flesh around a polished mahogany seed. Sweet, floral, perfumed — the fresh fruit eats nothing like the tinned version most people grew up with. Eat cold, eat fast.
Lychee (Litchi chinensis) is the fruit southern China has been growing for over two thousand years — a small, knobbled, pink-red drupe with translucent white flesh wrapped around a single shiny brown seed. Now widely grown across India, Madagascar, Vietnam and South Africa, but the Chinese cultivars are still the benchmark.
The flavour is unmistakable — sweet, deeply floral, with an unmistakable rose-perfume top note that's been described as everything from "liquid silk" to "the smell of a Chinese garden". Tinned lychee captures almost none of this, which is why fresh lychee in season feels like a different fruit.
Crack the shell at the seam, peel away, eat around the seed. Brilliant cold, with sparkling wine, in cocktails, or pressed into a granita. Buy what you'll eat in 3–4 days — the shell goes brown fast and the flesh follows.
