Facebook user Barima Nana Osei Bonsu posted some photos and videos of a certain tree bearing fruits that look like apples from afar, and Ghanaians have been reacting to the post with excitement.
“The young girl who planted the seed died five years ago, that’s the family attached to the picture. Unless proven otherwise, five years after cultivation… that’s the tree in the picture as well. WIAMOASE-Tanosi, ASHANTI,” he wrote on Facebook.
According to Barima Nana Osei Bonsu, the tree believed to be an apple was planted by one Nana Ama Asantewaa who died five years ago.
“She died five years ago. A few years after planting the seed she fell ill. She was concerned about how the family was going to live because they are poor so the family believes this is her way of helping them,” Starr News quoted him as having told Francis Abban Monday.
However, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Horticulture of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) said the physical characteristics of the tree come nowhere near apple or even pear, Myjoyonline.com reports.
Dr Irene Idan confirmed this to Luv FM after a reporter there visited the site of the tree in the Sekyere South District to take a sample. She said it looks more like a fig than an apple.
“The leaves don’t resemble that of apples, also the skin of an apple is very smooth but this is rough. When we cut the fruit, its internal formation doesn’t resemble an apple.
“The apple has thick mesocarp with long peduncle with seeds attached to it and that’ll be sitting in the pericarp,” Dr Irene Idan said.
She explained that a quick look at the fruit makes it resemble a pear, but the internal formation looks contrary.
“It’s more of a fig than an apple,” she concluded.
Well, she may have burst everyone’s burbles but the hope must not die.