10 Fantastical Hybrid Fruits Worth Knowing (PHOTOS)

On a recent trip to the grocery or the farmers' market, you may have noticed piles of curious fruits with strange-sounding names. Pluots and plumcots, tangelos and tayberries. What are these fruits? And where did they come from?

In most cases, they're the work of agriculturists who have created hybrids of two or more fruits by means of cross-pollination: the transfer of pollen from the flower of one plant to the stigma of another. The methods they employ have, in some cases, been around for hundreds of years. But sometimes, a hybrid is a work of nature -- two fruits that cross-pollinated in the wild.

Hybrids have nothing to do with the GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) we so often read about. Unlike GMOs, the genetics of hybrid fruit have not been altered in a lab, which can be hard to believe given their sometimes fantastical appearances.

But even though some hybrids look like they've been Photoshopped, every one of the fruits in the below slideshow is real.

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