Phyllanthus acidus, known as the Otaheite gooseberry, Malay gooseberry, Tahitian gooseberry, country gooseberry, star gooseberry, starberry, arbari, West India gooseberry, Grosella, or simply gooseberry tree, is one of the trees with edible small yellow berries fruit in the familyPhyllanthaceae. Despite its name, the plant does not resemble the gooseberry, except for the acidity of its fruits. It tastes sour and tart.
Description
Sapling
Phyllanthus acidus is an intermediary between a shrub and tree, reaching 2 to 9 m (6½ to 30 ft) high.[2] The tree's dense and bushy crown is composed of thickish, tough main branches, at the end of which are clusters of deciduous, greenish, 15-to-30-cm long branchlets. The branchlets bear alternate leaves that are ovate or lanceolate in form, with short petioles and pointed ends. The leaves are 2–7.5 cm long and thin, they are green and smooth on the upperside and blue-green on the underside. In general, the Otaheite gooseberry tree very much looks like the bilimbi tree.
Leaves
The flowers can be male, female or hermaphrodite.[2] They are small and pinkish and appear in clusters in 5-to-12.5-cm long panicles. Flowers are formed at leafless parts of the main branches, at the upper part of the tree. The fruits are numerous, oblate, with 6 to 8 ribs, and densely clustered. They are pale yellow or white, waxy, crisp and juicy, and very sour. 4 to 6 seeds are contained in a stone at the center of each fruit.[2][3]
The Otaheite gooseberry prefers moist soil.[2] It can be cultivated in a variety of ways—budding, cutting and air-layering—in addition to the usual seed growth. The tree is cultivated for its ornamental value,[5] but also for food and medicinal purposes. While it produces some fruit throughout the year, it is mainly harvested in January except in South India, where it bears crops in April–May and again in August–September.[2] As the fruit does not soften when ripe, it is harvested when the fruit begins to drop.[6]
Various parts of the plant are used for food. In Bangladesh, India and Indonesia, the cooked leaves are eaten.[3] While the fruit is eaten fresh, and is sometimes used as flavoring for other dishes in Indonesia, it is generally regarded as too tart to eat by itself in its natural form and is processed further.[3][4] It is candied in sugar or pickled in salt, used in chutney, relish or preserves. In the Philippines, it is used to make vinegar as well as eaten raw, soaked in salt or vinegar-salt solution and sold along the roadside. It is candied as well, usually stored in jars with syrup. They make these into a syrup in Malaysia. Liberally sugared, it is also used to make fruit juice. In Thailand it is used as an ingredient to make Som tam, to make pickled, boil in syrup (Ma-Yom Chuam).
Medically
The plant is also used medicinally. The peppered leaves are used to make a poultice to treat sciatica, lumbago and rheumatism (but have been observed to cause low blood pressure when combined with nitrates), while the seeds are used as a cathartic and the root, if prepared with care, as a purgative.[4][9] The syrup is used to medicate the stomach, and in India the fruit is eaten as a blood-enhancer for the liver;[4] a lehyam, nellikai lekiyam, for which the salient ingredient is gooseberry fruit, is offered to children to boost their immunity.[10]
Materials
While the wood is strong and durable if properly treated, the tree is not large and is rarely harvested for wood.[4] If harvested, it is used for small objects such as utensils. In India, the root bark is sometimes used as a tanning agent.[11]
References
^"Phyllanthus acidus information from Catalogue of Life: 2011 Annual Checklist". Govaerts R. (ed). For a full list of reviewers see: http://apps.kew.org/wcsp/compilersReviewers.do (2011). WCSP: World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (version Dec 2010). In: Species 2000 & ITIS Catalogue of Life: 2011 Annual Checklist (Bisby F.A., Roskov Y.R., Orrell T.M., Nicolson D., Paglinawan L.E., Bailly N., Kirk P.M., Bourgoin T., Baillargeon G., Ouvrard D., eds). DVD; Species 2000: Reading, UK. Retrieved 2011-05-04. ((cite web)): External link in |publisher= (help)
^Morton, Julia (16 June 1963). "A Fast Growing Vine". The Miami News. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
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Leeya, Yuttapong; Mulvany, Michael J.; Queiroz, Emerson F.; Marston, Andrew; Hostettmann, Kurt; Jansakul, Chaweewan (2010). "Hypotensive activity of an n-butanol extract and their purified compounds from leaves of Phyllanthus acidus (L.) Skeels in rats". European Journal of Pharmacology. 649 (1–3): 301–13. doi:10.1016/j.ejphar.2010.09.038. PMID20868659.
^Sousa, M.; Ousingsawat, J.; Seitz, R.; Puntheeranurak, S.; Regalado, A.; Schmidt, A.; Grego, T.; Jansakul, C.; et al. (2006). "An Extract from the Medicinal Plant Phyllanthus acidus and Its Isolated Compounds Induce Airway Chloride Secretion: A Potential Treatment for Cystic Fibrosis". Molecular Pharmacology. 71 (1): 366–76. doi:10.1124/mol.106.025262. hdl:10451/14755. PMID17065237. S2CID5793585.
