Mangosteen plant is an evergreen, upright tree reaching about 20- 60 ft in top. It’s generally present in tropical rainforests of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, in addition to in some cultivated orchards of Sri Lanka and India, the place annual precipitation and relative humidity are favorable for its progress. Contemporary purple fruits could be accessible within the markets from June till October.

Every tree bears a number of deep-purple, round-shaped fruits capped with gentle inexperienced calyx on the stem finish. Utterly matured fruit measures about 3-7 cm in diameter. Its robust outer rind is about 7-12 mm thick which accommodates bitter yellow latex that stains garments black.

Internally; it options 4 to 10 juicy, snow-white, tender, fleshy, triangular segments as in oranges. Every phase could carry 1-4 off-white coloured seeds. Seeds are inedible and bitter in style. The flavour of the fruit could be finest described as candy, mildly tangy, aromatic, and scrumptious.

Lemon-drop, and African mangosteens (Imbe). The fruits are smaller than the purple ones. Photograph: I like crops

Completely different species of Garcinia grown throughout Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America all alongside the tropical belt. Cherapu or Button mangosteen (Garcinia prainiana) is native to Malaysia. It contains a considerably flat, mandarin orange-like form with a skinny rind that may be peeled very simply by hand, once more as in oranges.

Lemon drop mangosteens (Garcinia madruno) are small dimension (2-4 cm diameter) fruits, native to the Malayan peninsula.

African mangosteen or Imbe (Garcinia livingstonei) is native to West Africa. They’re barely bigger than the lemon drop sort.