wax apple (White)

Wax apple is a tropical tree growing to 12 m tall, with evergreen leaves 10–25 cm long and 5–10 cm broad. The leaves are elliptical, but rounded at the base, they are aromatic when crushed. The flowers are white to yellowish-white, 2.5 cm diameter, with four petals and numerous stamens. The resulting fruit is a bell-shaped, edible berry, with colors like white. The fruit grows 4–6 cm long in wild plants, and has four fleshy calyx lobes at the tip. The skin is thin, and the flesh is white and spongy. Each berry holds one or two rounded seeds not larger than 0.8 cm, The flowers and resulting fruit are not limited to the axils of the leaves, and can appear on nearly any point on the surface of the trunk and branches. When mature, the tree is considered a heavy bearer, yielding up to 700 fruits in a crop. When ripe, the fruit puff outwards, with a slight concavity in the middle of the underside of the “bell”. Healthy wax apples have a light sheen to them. Despite its name, a ripe wax apple only resembles an apple on the outside in color. It does not taste like an apple, and it has neither the fragrance nor the density of an apple. Its flavor is similar to a snow pear, and the liquid-to-flesh ratio of the wax apple is comparable to a watermelon. Unlike either apple or watermelon, the wax apple’s flesh has a very loose weave. The very middle holds a seed situated in a sort of cotton candy-like mesh. This mesh is edible, but flavorless. The color of its juice depends on the cultivar.