A few weeks ago we ran a story in the Home section about the feijoa tree, a native of South America that also flourished in the Southland and is a favorite of some garden designers. Its fruit, known as the pineapple guava (it’s distantly related to the common guava), is strangely delicious - describing its flavor, the writer cites pineapple and guava, of course, and strawberry and lemon. The week after the story ran, letters poured in from readers who had assumed the mysterious, lumpy green fruit was inedible.

“I’ve been throwing them in the garbage for years!” marveled one of my colleagues. Apparently, so had other people in the office, because plastic bags of the fruit began showing up on the giveaway counter. The perfect size is the equivalent of about a golf ball and a half; I picked up a bigger one at a Vietnamese shop and it was full of hard little seeds. But the little ones, each half a single scoop of the spoon, are wonderful - they have a fruity, floral aroma and flavor to match.

And to answer the title question: They’re about $1.99 apiece at Whole Foods.