DIPOLOG TROPICAL FRUITS 2
 

1. Siriguelas  (Spondias purpurea) Purple Mombin One of the most popular small fruits of  the  American tropics.  It has acquired many other colloquial names: in English, red  mombin,  Spanish plum,  hog plum,  scarlet plum;  purple plum in the Virgin Islands; Jamaica plum in Trinidad; Chile plum in Barbados; wild plum in Costa Rica and Panama; red plum, as well as noba  and makka pruim in the Netherlands Antilles. Spanish names include:  ajuela  ciruela;  chiabal;  cirguelo;  ciruela.  The  purple  mombin is  native  and common both wild and cultivated from southern Mexico through northern Peru and Brazil, It is  commonly  planted  in  most of  the islands of the  West  Indies and  the  Bahamas. Spanish explorers carried this species  to  the Philippines, where it has been naturalized widely adopted.

2  Balimbing (Averrhoa Carambola)(Oxalidaceae) has traveled sufficiently to have acquired a  number  of regional names in addition to the popular Spanish appelation which belies  its  Far Eastern  origin.  In the Orient, it is usually  called balimbing,  belimbing, or belimbing  manis  ("sweet belimbing"),   to  distinguish  it  from  the bilimbi  or  belimbing asam,Perhaps a native of the Moluccas, the bilimbi is cultivated  throughout Indonesia; is cultivated  and  semi-wild  everywhere  in  the  Philippines;  is much grown in Ceylon and Burma. It is very common in Thailand, Malaya and Singapore; frequent in gardens across the plains of India, and has run wild in all the warmest areas of that country

3. . Marang  (Artocarpus odoratissimus) (family MORACEAE)This stately tree is of South East Asian origin. Its large leaves are similar to the breadfruit's, but they are less lobed. The  Latin  name  indicates that the  fruit is fine smelling. Contrasting the marang's robust  aroma, the fruit is succulent and  mildly flavoured, quite suiting  the  palate of  the uninitiated Westerners.The fruit is regarded as superior to both  jackfruit and chempedak The internal structure is similar to the jackfruit's. The core is relatively large, but there are fewer "rags" and more of the edible fruit. Arils are white and the size of a grape, each containing a 12mm long seed. 

4.  Piña (Ananas comosus) The pineapple is the leading edible member of the family Bromeliaceae which embraces about 2,000 species, mostly epiphytic and many strikingly ornamental.  It is  widely called  pina  by Spanish-speaking  people.  The pineapple was apparently  domesticated  by  the  Indians  and  carried  by them up  through South  and Central  America  to  Mexico and  the West  Indies long before the arrival  of  Europeans. The plant  has been insensibly grown in the Philippines where it become naturalized. One of the worlds biggest plantation of pineapple by Del Monte and Dole are located in the Philippines in Mindanao.
 

5.  Saging  (Musa x paridasiaca)  Banana & Plantain The word "banana" is a general  term embracing a number of species or hybrids in the genus Musa of the family Musaceae. These  two  fruit are similar in  many respects. They are treated together and unless  otherwise  indicated, both  the  introduction  and the recipes for one  fruit can be substituted for the other. As a rule, plantains are better cooked and bananas better eaten raw. The  plantain and  banana are descendants of wild, seeded  varieties. Both of these originated  in  Malaysia. The Lacatan variety have been widely cultivated in the Philippines and Peru where the leading fruit company Standard Fruit (Chiquita) and Dole has big plantation.
 

6. Avocado (Persia americana) The avocado, unflatteringly known in the past as alligator  pear, midshipman's  butter, vegetable  butter, or sometimes as butter pear, and called  by  Spanish-speaking  people  aguacate,  cura,  cupandra,  or  palta  is  the  only important edible fruit of the laurel family, Lauraceae.  The avocado may have originated in southern  Mexico  but  was cultivated from the Rio Grande to central Peru long before the arrival  of  Europeans. Thereafter, it was carried not only to the West Indies (where it was first  reported  in  Jamaica in 1696),  but to nearly all parts of the tropical and subtropical world with suitable environmental conditions. It was taken to the Philippines near the end of  the 16th Century; to the Dutch East  Indies  by  1750 and  Mauritius in 1780; was first brought to Singapore between 1830 and 1840 but has never become common in Malaya. It reached  India  in 1892 and is grown especially around  Madras and Bangalore but has never become very popular because of the preference for sweet fruits.

7. Bu-ongon  (Citrus maxima) Pummelo This, the largest citrus fruit, is known in the western world mainly as the principal ancestor of the grapefruit. As a luscious food, it is  famous  in  its  own right in its homeland, the Far East. The common name is derived from the Dutch pompelmoes, which is rendered  pompelmus or pampelmus  in  German, pamplemousse  in  French.  The  pummelo  is  native to southeastern  Asia  and  all  of Malaysia;  grows  wild  on  river  banks in the Fiji and Friendly Islands. It may have been introduced   into  China   around  100 B.C.  It  is  much  cultivated   in  southern   China (Kwang-tung, Kwangsi and Fukien Provinces) and especially in southern Thailand on the banks  to  the  Tha  Chine River; also in Taiwan and southernmost Japan, southern India, Malaya,  Indonesia,  New Guinea  and Tahiti.  The  first seeds are believed to have been brought  to the New World late in the 17th Century by a Captain Shaddock who stopped
 at Barbados on his way to England

8. Papaya  (Carica papaya)  is a member of the small family Caricaceae allied to the   Passifloraceae.  As  a  dual- or  multi-purpose,   early-bearing,  space-conserving, herbaceous  crop,  it  is widely acclaimed, despite  its susceptibility  to natural enemies. Though  the  exact  area of  origin  is unknown,  the papaya is believed  native to tropical America,  perhaps  in  southern  Mexico and neighboring Central America. It is recorded that  seeds  were  taken  to  Panama and then the Dominican  Republic before 1525 and cultivation  spread  to  warm elevations  throughout South and Central America, southern Mexico,  the  West  Indies and  Bahamas, and  to  Bermuda in 1616. Spaniards carried seeds  to the Philippines about 1550 and the papaya traveled from there to Malacca and India. Seeds were sent from India to Naples in 1626. Now the papaya is familiar in nearly all  tropical regions of the Old World and the Pacific Islands and has become naturalized in many areas