The Purple Mangosteen

This is the fruit that I used to come across in my primary school textbook but nowadays not many people have mentioned about it or even remember its existence especially the younger generation. Some may never taste it before.

In local language, it is called "Buah Manggis". I never know its English name until I asked my online teacher - Google. It is the Purple Mangosteen! The word "purple" is added to the name as the rind of the fruit is dark purple in color which appears to be very unique. The size of the fruit isn't that big, in between the size of ping pong ball and tennis ball.

 

In biological term, Purple Mangosteen belongs to the Family of Clusiaceae and Genus of Garcinia. It is from the Species of G. mangostana and therefore its binomial name is Garcinia mangostana.

 

The rind of the mongosteen is thick, but not hard to break into to reach the arils / flesh. There is no tools needed in order to open it except your palm! Just put a mangosteen between your palm with your fingers crossed, then pressed it with a little bit of force and the rind will break apart.

 

The flesh is white in color and it is soft. The taste is simply sweet but some with slight sour. There is no strange aroma in the fruit, so I guess it is not too hard to accept it. I found it very delicious and nice to eat!

Perhaps you can notice that among the cloves, there is one with bigger size than others. This clove is the one with a big seed inside. Yes! It can be eaten! Usually I will just swallow it into the stomach and trust me, it is not hard to swallow as you can imagine. The seed is covered by a layer of slippery flesh so it makes the swallowing process become smooth and easy!

While I browsing through the Net, I discovered a very interesting piece of information about this fruit. The gearwheel-like pedals at the bottom of the fruit determine the number of cloves inside it. If the pedals are 6, meaning there will be 6 cloves inside the fruit and if they are 7 meaning 7 cloves! I found it quite true and if you are doubt, perhaps you can buy some on the market and try out?

I also discovered that common mangosteen will normally have 6 or 7 gearwheel-like pedals but I am not sure if this is true. There is also an old saying that you can't eat sweets after eaten the purple mangosteen and that's the saying that make me stay a distance away from eating the fruit when I was still a kid, but now I don't think that will stop me from trying the very delicious local fruit!