Saw a street vendor selling Achicha in traffic somewhere in Ikeja. I pulled over immediately and bought a lot of it.
Achicha, a fruit that is commonly found in the eastern part of Nigeria. It is crunchy and tastes like carrot.
You have to peel the dusty brown velvety jagged outer cover to get to the smooth crunchy yellow inside.
You would further find a hard seed inside. I plan to plant the seed.
I’m just happy this fruit is now sold more and more in Lagos when it is in season.
Because it is indigenous to these regions it doesn’t exactly have an English name, some people call it “Monkey Kola” which is the most applicable name.
Achicha isn’t apricot.
Achicha doesn’t share the same genius nor species with the Apricot which is a stone fruit like
Peaches, Plums, Cherries, Lychee…
You don’t need do peel an apricot to get to the fruit.
Achicha is Cola parchycarpa
The white version is Cola Lepidota
And we have Cola Millenii which yoruba’s call Obi Edun.
The most applicable name for the fruit is “Monkey Kola”.
Ounje Aladun 
Thank you so much for this expository write-up.
It has clarified a lot. A friend argued with me that this fruit is apricot…I tried to explain that apricots don’t have this “ugly” she’ll but she was adamant…. 😆
So, it is called “monkey kola”. Now, I have a valid prove.
Thank you
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On a Facebook group SYTYCC. we had serious debate because a couple of folks insisted it was a type of Apricot. It took experts wading to quell the controversy
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It’s my pleasure to add my quota to the knowledge of this delicious fruit
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The vendor I bought mine from told me it’s Apricot o!🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
It was my husband that said it can’t be possible. I spent almost one hour on Google using descriptions: “What fruit is brown outside, white inside and has a red seed?” It was after a fruitless image search I realised you would very likely know! And I wasn’t wrong!!!
Labasket! Ose ore mi!😘😘
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For the life of me I can’t imagine how they would even think this is oddly related to apricot 🍑 . I’m looking forward to getting the white versions so I can update gbe blog with pictures
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You can bet going to give that woman an earful of education. I’m even going to tell her the Yoruba name for it. Abeg assist me with the correct pronunciation via WhatsApp.
As much as I hate not knowing stuff, I have a deeper dislike for misinformation.
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