This fruit used to be widely planted in Jakarta ~ Wonderful Jakarta

The Number of Sandaricum Koetjape is Getting Less in Jakarta

This fruit is called as Sandoricum Koetjape and sometimes it is called as santol or cotton fruit that tastes sweet and somewhat bittter. The fruit has now become one of the rare fruits in Jakarta, a place where most Betawi people used to plant it to make this fruit become identical with Jakarta.

This fruit shaped like a duku fruit but larger, thicker and the meat of the fruit is white as mangosteen, so it sometimes also called as Wild Mangosteen.

In fact, this fruit wasn't originally from Jakarta as it is supposedly coming from Indochina and Malay Peninsula until it finally spread to Indonesia.

No one was sure who firstly brought his seed to Indonesia, unlike the Raflesia Arnoldi flower in Bengkulu which was supposedly brought by Raffles. Likewise, it is unclear also what is the correlation of this fruit with one of the Sundanese musical instruments whose the same name.

Due to the shade of the trees, many Betawi people loved planting this fruit tree in their homes' yards.

This tree wood can also be used as materials to make various furnitures such as chairs, tables and cabinets because of its strength.

Long time ago, I still could see these trees of fruit grew a lot in Kalimalang and Jatiwaringin. I am not sure about its existence today as in line with the growth of the city of Jakarta, perhaps the trees were forced to be felled because the land is used for the construction of houses and business premises.

Do all readers still often see this fruit tree in Jakarta? if any, where are they?