Na’vi eat a wide variety of mauti (fruits) and fkxen (vegetables), which, like much of the flora and fauna on Pandora, potentially grow to colossal size. Giant fruit provides a valuable source of food for the Na’vi. The fruit is dissected to be eaten immediately, or packaged in large leaves for distribution and/or storage. This giant harvesting fruit can be up to sixty centimeters in diameter and weighs five to nine kilograms.
Smaller fruits that are known foods for forest-dwelling Na’vi include various berries, celia fruit, squid fruit, cannonball fruit, spartan fruit, and the coveted fruits of the canopy. Na’vi also consume different types of fungi, or spxam.
A staple of the Na’vi diet, the 60 cm-long tentacle-like fruits harvested from the squid fruit tree (right), or fyìpmaut, are very versatile and can be prepared in many ways. Eaten raw, these tubular fruits have a consistency of a mid-20th-century Terran fruit snack and have a slightly salty rhubarb-like taste. The fruit can also be cut into wheels and dried and cured into a portable fruit leather (similar to jerky) that Na’vi travelers often take with them on long journeys.
The celia tree (left), or tumpasuk, produces a 30 cm-long bulbous pod that holds a tendril-like strand of edible berries. The Na’vi gather the berries by climbing into the trees, dangling upside-down from the branches, and cutting the strand out of the pod from the inside. Another Na’vi will be under the pod on the ground and will catch the falling seed berry strand in a woven net to not damage the ripe fruit.
When fully ripe, the fruit of the cannonball tree (right), or rumaut, is a multi-colored pod that has an incredibly thick and tough outer husk, similar to a coconut. Na’vi harvesters will prepare their party for harvesting it and begin the arduous task of cracking the outer husk to retrieve the succulent and sweet meat inside. In English, the cannonball tree gets its name from the peculiar way the Na’vi interact with its titular fruit. The most common way of getting to the fruit is to climb to the highest height of the tree and launch the fruit from the highest branch. With the right velocity, the husk will crack and the Na’vi will be able to insert sharpened branches and crack open the shell to reveal the fruit inside.
Different types of pasuk; tìhawnuwll bearing fruit; melon tree:
