Thursday, April 29, 2010

Water guava: Jambu Madu: Thai Rose apple



In Borneo, we called this kind of guava, water guava or Jambu Madu. It is very sweet and juicy. My parents had a couple of trees and we used to have buckets of the fruits. Some times we dipped it in salt or the sour plum powder.

These two photos were taken in my Uncle Albert's garden in Miri. If you see carefully at the green guava photo, you can see the red ants. I was stung badly while I was photographing the fruits. Apparently the ants had a function, they pollinate the flowers. Without them, there will be no fruits.

About ten years ago, Singapore started to import the Thai rose apple (chompoo). There are several varieties of rose apples, with the most common in Thailand having a light green green skin. They were very expensive and grace the fruit baskets in hotels.

I lamented the times when I didn't appreciate the buckets and buckets of fruits we had from our trees. To be honest, I had so much of them as a kid that I don't really fancy them. I bought some Thai ones for nostalgic reasons. Just as well my kids and the water engineer didn't like them.

7 comments:

Diane AZ said...

Interesting post, I've never heard of water guava. I have a pineapple guava tree that makes pretty flowers but no fruit.

Kate-Marita Pettersen said...

That fruit looks delicious, I have never heard of it:)
Have a nice weekend,
from Kate in Northern Norway:)

Ana said...

hi Ann, thanks for the comment you left for my photohunt:black. Now I'm visiting your blog and this fruit here looks so tasty, I hope to try some one day :)

rainfield61 said...

My ants are different from your red ants. They are giant ants, but never bite.

I go hiking alone. Always alone.

Anonymous said...

i have this fruit it is nice

Jessie said...

Hostels in cities usually have good security systems, with a combination lock, key or smart card entry to the front door, and usually the same to each dorm.

Pousada Ubatuba

Anonymous said...

We call this "mountain apple" in Hawaii.