Wood apple, elephant apple
(Feronia limonia, formerly F. elephantum — Family Rosaceae)
The wood apple is found in most parts of the Indian sub-continent and eastwards to the China Sea.
Its former botanical name reflects the fact that elephants liked to eat them; so did monkeys, which is evidenced in the Sanskrit name “kapipriya” meaning ‘dear to monkeys.
The round gray fruit is about the size of an apple, having hard shells and containing a brown pulp used to make sherbets, jellies, and chutneys in India.
The pulp is also eaten raw with a sweetener or spices, but doing so is inconvenient because of the numerous small seeds.
The tree exudes a gum which closely resembles Gum Arabic but is whiter, more transparent, more expensive, but superior in viscosity.
