| Neutral | Fruticosa | On Oct 3, 2009, Fruticosa from Midway City, CA wrote: This is a very messy plant since it drops dozens of fruit each day. Nearly all the fallen fruit split upon impact if they fall on a paved surface. The fruit also leaves minor stains on pavement.
The fruit is edible but slimy inside. The tree is called "gunda" in the Hindi language, and in India the gunda fruit is often made into gunda pickles (as are mangoes, in that country). Other common names of the tree are Bird Lime Tree, and Lasura (in the Nepali language).
The tree is fast-growing. One business manager complained not only about all the fruit falling daily onto his driveway, but that the tree's branches would sweep past the motion sensors, which would automatically alert the police in ongoing false alarms, and every time he tore off one of the limbs in reaction, the branch would quickly grow back to sweep the sensors again.
The fruit look similar to longan fruit, but the gunda fruit surface is pink, smooth, and fleshy, rather than crinkled, hard, or spiked. There is a large pinkish pit inside each fruit. Washing a split fruit is like handling a live bubble snail shell from the beach: it's smooth, heavy, roundish, and slippery.
The taste is mild but pleasant, like a cross between a peach and a plum. The slimy interior isn't particularly unpleasant while eating the fruit, except that it tends to coat one's tongue, which then seems briefly to block the taste buds and therefore to block further taste of the fruit, and seems to leave a dry sensation on the tongue. While eating, the slime also tends to get onto one's lips. |
