Africa’s Queen of Fruits (Worldwatch)

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Sandie Roach posted in “Friends of Container Gardening Project in Malawi” :

http://blogs.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet/imbe-africa%E2%80%99s-queen-of-fruits/

Imbe: Africa’s Queen of Fruits

By Kim Kido

With sap that makes arrow poison, leaves that contain antibacterial compounds, and fruit as tasty as its cousin mangosteen, the uses of imbe (Garcinia livingstonei) are as varied as the places visited by its namesake David Livingstone. One of about 400 varieties of Garcinia, imbe is the best known relative of the mangosteen in Africa.

The fruit is eaten raw, cooked with porridge, seeded and dried, or crushed like grapes to create a drink. The fruit can also be fermented to make a purplish wine or soaked in alcohol and mixed with syrup to make liqueur.

Although the fruit is tasty, the plant is more often used as an ornamental in landscaping than a source of food. The tree decorates Mozambique’s capitol and can be seen near Victoria Falls in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Hardy, somewhat salt-tolerant, and drought-resistant, the tree occurs naturally in landscapes as varied as the sand dunes of Tana Delta in Kenya, open woodland of South Africa, the Okavango Delta of Botswana, and termite mounds in Zambia. The tree provides forage for wildlife like elephants and canoe-building material, although the latex produced by the tree can make the wood difficult to carve.

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The tree is also potentially a good candidate for intercropping with other species, and its drought-tolerance and attractiveness to insects and birds may make it useful in ecological restoration of degraded landscapes.

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