A Field Guide to Huila's Fruit, from Lulo to Granadilla

At a juice counter anywhere in Colombia, the first question is not what you want but how you want it: en agua o en leche — with water or with milk. The second question is harder, because the board above the counter lists a dozen fruits you have never seen in a supermarket, and half of them do not have an English name.

Huila, in the country's south, sits in the upper Magdalena valley between two arms of the Andes. It is best known abroad for coffee, but the same combination of altitude bands, volcanic soil and reliable sun produces one of the richest fruit inventories in Colombia — and in particular an extraordinary concentration of the passion fruit family.

This is a field guide, not a shopping list. Learn to read these fruits and a Colombian market stops being decorative and becomes legible.

The passion fruit family, decoded

Half the confusing fruit in Huila belongs to the genus Passiflora. They look nothing alike and taste nothing alike, but the internal architecture is always the same: a shell, and inside it a cluster of seeds each wrapped in juicy pulp.

• Granadilla (Passiflora ligularis) — hard, smooth orange shell that cracks like an eggshell. Inside, translucent grey seeds in mild, sweet, faintly floral pulp. Eaten with a spoon, straight from the shell. The gentlest of the family, and the usual first one to hand to a visitor.
• Maracuyá (Passiflora edulis) — the yellow one, wrinkling as it ripens, aggressively sour. Almost always turned into juice, sometimes with a great deal of sugar. Extraordinary aroma.
• Gulupa — the purple form of the same species, smaller, sweeter, more perfumed. Colombia exports large volumes of it to Europe.
• Curuba — the elongated, fuzzy, yellow-green one, sometimes called banana passionfruit. It grows in cooler high country and is best blended with milk.
• Cholupa (Passiflora maliformis) — small, round, hard-shelled, intensely tart. This one is Huila's own: the Cholupa del Huila was the first Colombian fruit to be granted a denomination of origin, in 2007, tying the name to this department the way a wine appellation ties a name to a valley.

Lulo: the fruit you drink

Lulo (Solanum quitoense) is a small orange fruit with a faint furry coat and, when you cut it, a startling green interior. It is not a fruit you eat out of hand: raw, it is bracingly acidic. Blended with water and a little sugar it becomes jugo de lulo, a pale green drink somewhere between lime, rhubarb and something entirely unfamiliar. It is native to the Andean slopes of Colombia and Ecuador, where it is also known as naranjilla, and it is genuinely difficult to find outside the region because it travels badly.

Like most of these fruits, it is a good source of vitamin C, and — this matters — a poor source of anything if you drink only the sugar-heavy version.

Guanábana, and the claims that follow it

Guanábana (Annona muricata, soursop) is the large, spiny, dark green fruit that looks faintly prehistoric. The pulp is white, fibrous and creamy, tasting like a cross between banana and citrus. It is superb blended with milk.

It is also the subject of persistent internet claims about curing serious illness. Those claims are not supported by evidence, and concentrated leaf extracts are a different thing altogether from eating the fruit. Enjoy it as fruit. Any question about disease belongs with a doctor, not with a juice.

The small ones worth knowing

• Uchuva (Physalis peruviana) — the golden berry in a papery lantern, tart and grape-like, exported widely from Colombia.
• Pitahaya amarilla — yellow dragon fruit, mildly sweet, with a well-earned reputation for a strong laxative effect in quantity. Colombia is one of the main producers.
• Mamoncillo — small green spheres sold in bunches, cracked with the teeth for a single tart, gelatinous seed coat.
• Zapote — dense orange flesh, sweet, unmistakably tropical, usually eaten fresh or blended.
• Badea — the giant of the Passiflora genus, sometimes the size of a melon, more often turned into a drink than eaten.

Juice or whole fruit?

Colombian fruit culture is overwhelmingly liquid, and that is worth thinking about. Blending removes nothing — the fibre is still there — but straining does, and adding sugar changes the picture again. A jugo de lulo en agua with little or no sugar is a very different proposition from the same drink made with three spoonfuls.

Three practical rules:

1. Prefer the whole fruit where the fruit permits it: granadilla, uchuva, zapote.
2. Ask for less sugar, or none. Sin azúcar is a normal request, and the fruit is usually good enough to carry itself.
3. Treat milk versions as food, not drink. A jugo en leche is closer to a snack than to hydration, which is fine if you plan for it.

What the land will grow

The 30 hectares of Phoenix Oasis in Rivera, Huila, sit in exactly this fruit country, and the agricultural plan for the site gives real space to it: productive planting alongside restoration, with the fruit calendar shaping what appears on the table rather than a menu written in advance and sourced to match.

When the first stays begin in July 2028, the intention is that a large part of what is served will have grown within sight of where it is eaten — including the passion fruits that carry this department's name. Until then, the useful preparation is a small one: find a market that sells something on this list, and try the one you cannot pronounce.

You can read about the Foundation's restoration work while you look for it.