What is This Fruit Tree?

This year I work with a couple fruit enthusiasts. Sometimes the three of us would take a break during our work day to walk and check out different plants in the neighborhood. Since I work just 4 blocks away from home, we are basically checking out the edible plants in my neighborhood.  A couple months ago we looked at this tree in the photo above. At the time it did not have fruits.  Today we went back to the same tree with a book called Tropical Fruits and Other Edible Plants of the World by Rolf Blancke in attempt to identify this tree.   Unfortunately, we could not find anything in the book that looks exactly like what we saw.  In addition to the flowers and premature fruits on the tree, I also found a ripened fruit on the ground.  I picked it up to show my coworkers. One of them pulled it apart using her hands. We all had a good look inside of it.  I even tasted it by touching it with my finger first. It was sweet.

Since both of my coworkers have been looking through the tropical fruits book for the past several weeks, it was my turn to look at the pictures.  As I flipped through the pages, I saw a fruit which could possibly be what we saw today. The photos in the book for each fruit are very limited. It has either one or two photos only and usually they are pictures of the fruit and leaves.   Every time I saw a possible candidate, I typed it into Google Images for more photos. After about 3 tries, I found the mystery fruit. It turned out to be white sapote!  I was able to find many images of the trees, flowers, ripe fruits and fruits on the trees, etc.  It was a perfect match. By the descriptions of white sapote, it sounded delicious. We didn't really try the slightly rotted fruit on the ground because we didn't really know what it was even though we suspected it was edible.

I will be walking Cracus toward the direction of the white sapote tree from here on.