Rock Fruit
Basic Information
Anatomy
This fruit looks like it is made of stone; its outside is made up of a thick, hard skin that has a rust red, rugged texture. This is part of the fruit. The skin has thousands of microscopic openings that collects moisture from the air. They open during the night when there is most moisture in the air, and close as the sun rises with its drying heat.
Inside the rock-like layer of skin, the fruit is juicy and has a light green-yellow flesh.
The underside houses the roots of the rock fruit. They are thick and burrow far from the fruit to maximize its intake of water and nutrients.
Additional Information
Domestication
Though it is difficult, the P'tinians make sure to farm the rock fruit as much as they can. One fruit is carefully dug up together with a wide piece of earth, and then planted in a rocky soil bed in the outer parts of P'tin. The ground around the seedling is kept undisturbed and positioned so that it receives the most ammount of sunlight. As the ground gets really warm the roots start to develop new sprouts, and they grow until they are about three fingerwidths in size. At this time the fruit has a sharp point on the top, about the size of half its width, which starts working its way up through the rocky soil. Many sprouts may lose the fight for their life in this stage, as they might have just started growing in the wrong place with too many big, hard rocks in the way. But those that do make it start coming up out of the soil, and ready to take in the sun. When ripe, the rocks are harvested by cutting them off their roots and then cracked open with a tool.
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