Pouteria campechiana
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| Canistel | ||||||||||||||
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| Pouteria campechiana Baehni |
The Canistel (Pouteria campechiana) is an evergreen tree found from Mexico to Brazil. Its binomial name is derived from the Mexican town of Campeche, where it is native. It is sometimes (wrongly) referred to as Lucuma campechiana.
The canistel grows up to 10 m high, and produces orange-yellow fruits, up to 7 cm long, which are edible raw. Canistel flesh is sweet, with a texture often compared to that of a cooked egg yolk, hence its colloquial name of "eggfruit." It is closely related to the Mamey sapote and abiu.
The plant's name in the Vietnamese language is cây trứng gà (“chicken egg” plant) because of the appearance of the fruit. It also has been given the Vietnamese name lekima. This is very unusual because Vietnamese is a tonal language which uses predominantly monosyllabic words. It appears that this name derives from the word lucuma. The unusual name "Lekima" has been included in the list of typhoon names, and was applied to a storm which devastated north central Vietnam and killed from 42 to 55 people in Viet Nam on 10-03-2007.
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The fruit is loaded with vitamins and minerals such as vitamin B and vitamin A. It also contains little calories.
