If You Read Nothing Else

A hundred grams covers a full day of vitamin C, which is more than an orange.

The floral smell is the fruit talking. A lychee with no smell has been off the tree too long.

Never eat unripe lychee on an empty stomach, and never let a child do it.

Lichi reached Iranian fruit stalls through eastern trade, and it still feels like a luxury: the season is short, the price is high, and people eat it slowly. Crack the rough pink shell and you find translucent white flesh around one dark stone. Its unmistakably floral taste lets it take the place of rose water in sharbat and fruit salads.

Known to botanists as Litchi chinensis.