Wood Apple: Germination ,Growing ,Care, Use and its Surprising Health Benefits.

                      
                          Wood  Apple


Wood apples look like small coconuts with a hard brown shell and a rough exterior similar to tree bark.The mature fruit is dropped on the ground from a height of about 1 foot. If it bounces, it is not ripe yet. The pulp of the Wood apple is brown, strongly pungent, mealy in texture, resinous, astringent, and tastes acidic or sweet depending on the variety. Ripe Wood apple pulp is similar to tamarind in texture and in scent, with an aroma reminiscent of raisins. Within the pulp are numerous small, crunchy, white, edible seeds.


The wood-apple is native and common in the wild in dry plains of India and Ceylon and cultivated along roads and edges of fields and occasionally in orchards. It is also frequently grown throughout Southeast Asia, in northern Malaya and on Penang Island. In India, the fruit was traditionally a "poor man's food" until processing techniques were developed in the mid-1950's.

There are 2 forms, one with large, sweetish fruits; one with small, acid fruits.

Scientific name: Limonia acidissima


Flower Color: White

Mature Height: 50-60 ft

Planting Depth: Plant 6" deep

Temperature: -5°C to 10°C

Light Requirements: Full Sun, Half Sun / Half Shade

Plant Type / Life Cycle: Perennial

Soil Type: Loamy Soil,


Uses:

Pectin: The pectin has potential for multiple uses in pectin-short India, but it is reddish and requires purification.

Rind: The fruit shell is fashioned into snuffboxes and other small containers.

Gum: The trunk and branches exude a white, transparent gum especially following the rainy season. It is utilized as a substitute for, or adulterant of, gum arabic, and is also used in making artists' watercolors, ink, dyes and varnish. It consists of 35.5% arabinose and xylose, 42.7% d-galactose, and traces of rhamnose and glucuronic acid.

Wood: The wood is yellow-gray or whitish, hard, heavy, durable, and valued for construction, pattern-making, agricultural implements, rollers for mills, carving, rulers, and other products. It also serves as fuel.
The heartwood contains ursolic acid and a flavanone glycoside, 7-methylporiol-b-D-xylopyranosyl-D-glucopyranoside.

Medicinal Uses: The fruit is much used in India as a liver and cardiac tonic, and, when unripe, as an astringent is effective treatment for hiccough, sore throat and diseases of the gums. The pulp is poulticed onto bites and stings of venomous insects, as is the powdered rind.
Juice of young leaves is mixed with milk and sugar candy and given as a remedy for biliousness and intestinal troubles of children. The powdered gum, mixed with honey, is given to overcome dysentery .
Oil derived from the crushed leaves is applied on itch and the leaf detection is given to children as an aid to digestion. Leaves, bark, roots and fruit pulp are all used against snakebite.  The bark is chewed applied on venomous wounds.