Velvet apple

The mabolo, or velvet apple, is an oval or flattened fruit 5 to 10 cm across, its thin pink, brownish, yellow, orange or purple-red skin densely coated with short golden-brown or coppery hairs³. The whole fruit gives off a strong, unpleasant, cheese-like smell, but it comes from the skin: the peeled flesh is whitish, firm and mealy, “somewhat like that of an overripe apple”, mild and more or less sweet, “suggesting a banana-flavored apple”³. It should be peeled and chilled for a few hours before eating, so that the smell fades³.

It is native to the low and middle-altitude forests of the Philippines, from Luzon to the southernmost Sulu Islands, where it is grown for its fruit and even more as a roadside shade tree³. It was taken to Java and Malaya, and in 1881 to Calcutta; there are scattered trees in Florida and the Caribbean³. Morton found that “nowhere has the mabolo gained the favor it enjoys in its homeland”³. Kew gives its native range as eastern and southern Taiwan to eastern Borneo².