I miss Aratiles so much. I grew up eating this sweet wild cherry every afternoon. I cherish every piece I got from the tree. Climb with plastics for ice so I can keep them while I hang like a monkey on the tree. And if I'll forgot to bring plastic with me, I'll eat them so fast. It will really made me full. I guess that's the reason why I don't ask my mom to buy snack for me.
By the way what's Aratiles? Muntingia calabura Linn is the scientific name. It's one of the Philippine Medicinal Plants. A fast growing tree to a height of 5-10 meters, with spreading branches. Leaves are hairy, sticky, alternate, distichous, oblong-ovate to broadly oblong-lanceolate, 8 to 12 cm long, with toothed margins, pointed apex and inequilateral base, one side rounded and the other acute. Flowers are 2 cm in diameter, white, extra-axillary, solitary or in pairs. Sepals are 5, green, reflexed, lanceolate, about 1 cm long. Petals are white, obovate, i cm long and spreading. The berry fruitis rounded, about 1.5 cm diameter, red on ripening, smooth, fleshy, sweet and many seeded.
In Mexico, the fruits are eaten and sold in markets. The fruits can be processed into jams and the leaves can be used for making tea. In Brazil, the trees are planted along river banks. The fruits falling from the tree attract fish that are then caught. In the Philippines the fruits are usually eaten mostly by children although it is not sold in markets.
In traditional medicine, its flowers can be used as an antiseptic and treat abdominal cramps.
The timber from the Jamaican cherry is reddish-brown. It is compact, durable and lightweight and can be used for carpentry. It could also be used as firewood. The bark can be used to produce ropes. Due to its ability to grow in poor soil and its effective propagation by means of bats and birds, it could be used for reforestation projects.
In India, it is used in urban gardens for its ability to grow fast and attractiveness to small fruit eating birds such as the flowerpeckers. It is also commonly planted in parking lots.
I'm so thankful its free in our country, we will just climb to our neighbors' tree. When I'm on my high school days I plant my own tree so no one will tell me not to climb on their tree. I remember my first boyfriends' visit, I'm actually on the tree. I made a little place where I can lay down at night to look at the stars. Just made me happy to reminisced my experiences with my Aratiles tree.
4 comments:
wow! miss ko na rin ito! I always climbed this when I was a litte girl, up to high school because we have a tree in our backyard...
kaya siguro tayo smart neh hehehe kakaloka tong fruits na to..
I miss aratiles, too! On weekends my friends and I would trek to our teacher's house for aratiles-picking! Her family was so generous.
Once I worked in an advertising agency in Pioneer & Sheridan streets in Mandaluyong.
Inside the compound of the agency, there were 3 aratiles trees. They were always full of multi-colored fruits. I was probably 16 years old that time and working as an artist. Our janitor, an American boy about my age, would go up one of the trees, and while eating aratiles, we talked about girls.
This fruit tastes so exquisite and I never got tired eating them, especially while talking about girls.
:)
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