Muntingia

Would I have had the energy to climb trees, run across open fields, look for tadpoles in puddles, chase butterflies, invent games, pick fruits off the aratilis tree, dream, dream, dream to fill those many, many hours of nothingness?

Then, we would climb the aratilis tree and see who picked the most number of aratilis fruits.

Those who are looking for macopa, siniguelas, and aratilis will surely find these delicacies in the city's fruit stalls.

They do this by infusing their concoctions with unusual flavors and giving them equally unusual names-champorado (The People's Champ), sampaguita (Saison D'Orleans), vanilla chili (Love and Lust), even aratilis (Rastripel).

Someone once asked me, "Why don't you make aratilis gelato?" But we have to wait for the market to be ready for these out-of-the-ordinary flavors.

We can rattle off fruits up to the tiny aratilis, but Arcenas chose a tree, the arbol de fuego, also called caballero or fire tree, which produces beautiful red blooms by summertime.