Ways to use this list
- Fruit of the week: spin on Monday, buy that fruit by Friday, and let everyone score it out of five for taste, smell and texture.
- Guess the fruit: describe its skin, seeds and where it grows without saying its name; the notes in the list help with rambutan, durian and mangosteen.
- Language practice: name the fruit in the language you are learning, such as manzana, pomme or Apfel for an apple, then spin again.
- Still-life art: set Winners to 3, arrange those three fruits in a bowl with the light coming from one side, and draw the shadows as well as the shapes.
- Colour hunt for little ones: press Red or Green, spin, and the child names the fruit and finds something of the same colour in the room.
- Fruit salad night: spin two fruits from Tropical and one from Berries, and make a bowl that uses all three.
Press Spin the wheel, tap the game or press the Space bar. Change the list in the box as you
like: add your own, delete what doesn't suit you, or write *2 after an entry to give it double the
chance. The game buttons switch the same list to a duck race, hat, claw machine and more.
The full list (50 entries)
- Apple
- Banana
- Mango
- Strawberry
- Pineapple
- Kiwi – brown and fuzzy outside, bright green inside
- Blueberry
- Watermelon
- Orange
- Grape
- Peach
- Pear
- Cherry
- Lemon
- Papaya
- Pomegranate – packed with hundreds of juicy red seeds
- Coconut
- Plum
- Raspberry
- Lime
- Apricot
- Passion fruit – wrinkly when ripe, full of seedy pulp
- Dragon fruit – pink skin, white or red flesh with tiny black seeds
- Fig – soft and sweet, with tiny crunchy seeds
- Lychee – rough red shell around sweet white flesh
- Guava – pink or white inside, with many small hard seeds
- Cantaloupe – a melon with netted skin and orange flesh
- Blackberry
- Grapefruit
- Persimmon – some kinds are only sweet once very soft
- Nectarine
- Tangerine
- Cranberry
- Gooseberry – sharp and tart, often cooked into crumbles
- Blackcurrant – tangy, mostly made into jam and juice
- Redcurrant
- Honeydew melon – smooth pale skin and green flesh
- Avocado – a fruit with one big seed, eaten in savoury dishes
- Date – grows in heavy bunches on palm trees
- Jackfruit – the largest fruit that grows on trees
- Durian – spiky, with a smell strong enough to be banned on some trains
- Rambutan – a hairy red cousin of the lychee
- Starfruit – cut it across and every slice is a star
- Kumquat – a tiny citrus eaten whole, skin and all
- Quince – hard and sour raw, so it is usually cooked
- Mulberry – like a long blackberry, but grows on trees
- Custard apple – creamy flesh; sitaphal in India
- Sapodilla – brown skin, sweet malty flesh; chikoo in India
- Mangosteen – thick purple rind around soft white segments
- Pomelo – the biggest citrus fruit
Questions people ask
Can I add vegetables too?
Yes: type them into the list, one per line, for a mixed wheel. The random vegetable generator has over 50 ready to spin, and explains why a botanist counts tomatoes and cucumbers as fruits.
Can I show pictures?
Yes, two ways. Start a line with an emoji, like 🍍 Pineapple or 🥝 Kiwi, or add photos in 🖼️ Photos named after the fruit (mango.jpg becomes "Mango"). Pictures help children who can't read yet.
Is a banana really a berry?
To a botanist, yes. A berry is a fleshy fruit that grows from a single ovary, the seed-holding part of one flower, so bananas, grapes, kiwis, blueberries and even avocados count. Strawberries and raspberries do not: a raspberry is a cluster of tiny fruits, and the "seeds" on a strawberry are its true fruits.
Which fruit is the biggest?
The jackfruit is the largest fruit that grows on a tree: one can weigh more than 30 kg (66 lb). Botanists count pumpkins as fruit too, and the record-breaking giants weigh over a tonne. Among citrus fruits, the pomelo is the biggest.
Why is the kiwi named after a bird?
The fruit first grew wild in China, and English speakers once called it the Chinese gooseberry. In 1959 New Zealand growers renamed it kiwifruit for selling abroad, after their national bird, which is also small, brown and fuzzy. In many countries it is now simply called kiwi.
Which fruits are in season now?
It depends on where you live. In the UK and the northern US, strawberries and cherries peak in early summer, apples and pears in autumn, and citrus in winter. In India mangoes arrive in the hot months from April to June, and in Australia the seasons are flipped, so mango season peaks around December.