Star apple

The star apple is round, 5 to 10 cm across, red-purple, dark purple or pale green, and “feels in the hand like a rubber ball”³. Its soft, white, milky, sweet pulp surrounds six to eleven seed cells, which, when the fruit is cut across, “radiate from the central core like an asterisk or many-pointed star, giving the fruit its common English name”^3,4. In Suriname it is sterappel, and in the French West Indies pomme surette³.

It must not be bitten into: the skin and rind are inedible, the latex bitter, and the flesh is spooned out of the halved fruit³. In Jamaica it is eaten with sour orange juice, a mixture called matrimony³. In Haiti it was the favourite fruit of King Christophe, who held court in the shade of a very large tree at Milot³.

It is common through the Caribbean, grown from Mexico to Peru and northern Argentina, and in southern Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines³.

Where the sources disagree

• Origin. It is often said to be native to Central America, but the botanists Paul Standley and Louis Williams held that it was not, and that it may belong to the West Indies³; Kew treats it as a cultigen from Central America².