Saba comorensis

bungo
Saba comorensis [1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Asterids
Order: Gentianales
Family: Apocynaceae
Genus: Saba
Species: S. comorensis
Binomial name
Saba comorensis
(Bojer ex A.DC.) Pichon
Synonyms

Landolphia comorensis (Bojer ex A. DC.) K. Schum.

Saba comorensis, the bungo fruit (pl. mabungo), mbungo, or rubber vine is a plant, which is widespread across most of tropical Africa as well as in Madagascar and Comoros. It grows in Tanzania, for example on the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean. The species belongs to the genus Saba from the Apocynaceae family. The fruit looks similar to an orange with a hard orange peel but when opened it contains a dozen or so pips, which have the same texture as a mango seed with the fibres and juices all locked in these fibres.

The fruit also makes a delicious juice drink which has been described as tasting "somewhere between a mango, an orange and a pineapple" [2] The aromatic juice of the Bungo fruit is also popular and highly appreciated on Pemba Island and other parts of coastal Tanzania.[3]

Not only in the Tanzanian Mahale Mountains National Park, S. comorensis is dispersed by chimpanzees.[4]

References

  1. ↑ 1885 illustration from Franz Eugen Köhler, in Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen
  2. ↑ The Times retrieved 30 July 2009 "The highlight is a juice from the bungo fruit, indigenous to Zanzibar, which has a taste somewhere between a mango, an orange and a pineapple."
  3. ↑ "Saba comorensis in Agroforestree Database" (PDF). web page. Retrieved 30 July 2012.
  4. ↑ James V. Wakibara. Abundance and dispersion of some chimpanzee-dispersed fruiting plants at Mahale, Tanzania. African Journal of Ecology Vol. 43, Issue 2, pp. 107–113, May 2005. Article first published online: 27 MAY 2005. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2028.2005.00553.x


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