46 second video of Keppel tree and ripe fruit

[red durian]

My wife, son and I got to see our first keppel tree and taste the fruit for the first time today.  If you have never seen the tree or fruit, or a person tasting it for the first time, and you can tolerate the low quality video, here it is. 

Keppel, First Contact

[Patrick]

Nice! Front 242 soundtrack..

[Jackfruitwhisperer69]

RedDurio,
Awesome vid! The music makes it more exciting...The Keppel fruit sure looks delish

Thanks for sharing

[siafu]

 Thanks. So nice to see this elusive fruit/tree.

 I trust the "hu-hu" was of approval !?

[red durian]

I have been struggling with a description of the taste all day.  It is non-acidic and sweet.  After that it gets difficult.  I will venture to say it is like mild caramel mixed with an unpleasant hint of poorly-ripened sapodilla... but with a nice texture (ie: no grit)

a modification:  now, 24 hrs off the tree, I just ate one and it had none of the unpleasant hint of poorly-ripened sapodilla.  It was an excellent flavour.  The only negative is that most of the mass of the fruit is seed and skin.

[red durian]

My son liked it so much, when we got home he ignored the lovely lemony jak fruit in the bowl already prepared and went to work on 3 keppels.

[FlyingFoxFruits]

wow!

thanks for posting, now I feel like I've stood by someone's side as they tasted harvested and tasted this fruit!

This one is on my list, of must taste fruits!

Like an annona mixed with a jaboticaba (in appearance) 

How tall was the tree? 40ft?

thanks again for posting the very nice video!
BTW, those ants looked angrily happy to be on the tree!

[luc]

One of my trees ........x years down the road , haha... picture taken in Panama.    .Great video Red Durian .

[red durian]

When I interviewed the girl last year about the fruit, she gave me mostly good information, but with one error.  Here is what I recorded from our interview:

sour, but smells good…kepel means 'fist', tangerine sized... not sold in market..fruit rolled in hands like governor plum… lots of seed…yellow fleshed…a bit sweet

It is not sour, and I think she meant not that there are many seeds, but that the proportion of seed to flesh is high.  I was so happy to learn that the fruit should be rolled in the hands.  I know for governor plum that knowledge makes a big difference in the taste of the fruit.  I have not yet tried keppel unrolled to taste the difference.

I google translated something from Indonesian saying that the skin fights bad breath (I assume that is what "mouth deodorizer" means) but I can't imagine anyone eating the skin just as it is.  My local contacts have not heard this.

[red durian]

How tall was the tree? 40ft?

The tree was about 30 feet tall.  I couldn't get a good shot of the whole tree, but got a photo of part of it.  The tree was pyramidal (if that is the correct term).  The foliage is very thick and beautiful.

[BMc]

They seem to grow okay in the sub tropics and can be more decorative here as the colours in the leaves get more intense due to the cool.

[Mike T]

BMc they sure get nice leaves around here.The trees I was casing that were covered in flowers had all the small fruit and flowers fall off due to dry weather.Last year there were hundreds of fruit set when it rained right through the dry season.There has been almost no rain for a few months so I will not be able to get seeds this season.

[luc]

They are also cold resistant , 7 Celsius in the coldest winter nights here , no problem at all .

[tabbydan]

When I interviewed the girl last year about the fruit, she gave me mostly good information, but with one error.  Here is what I recorded from our interview:

sour, but smells good…kepel means 'fist', tangerine sized... not sold in market..fruit rolled in hands like governor plum… lots of seed…yellow fleshed…a bit sweet

It is not sour, and I think she meant not that there are many seeds, but that the proportion of seed to flesh is high.  I was so happy to learn that the fruit should be rolled in the hands.  I know for governor plum that knowledge makes a big difference in the taste of the fruit.  I have not yet tried keppel unrolled to taste the difference.

I google translated something from Indonesian saying that the skin fights bad breath (I assume that is what "mouth deodorizer" means) but I can't imagine anyone eating the skin just as it is.  My local contacts have not heard this.

I've heard kepel varries in flavor quite a bit.  The description I usually hear is "mango + cinnamon".  The ones I had in CATIE were not terribly impressive, they were basically like a watered down and simplified mango (in flavor).

Legends about kepel are common.  There are some old legends that claim if you eat it you will smell like violets (I wonder if something is lost in translation there because I'm not sure that violets are native to Indonesia).  I ate 6-9 fruits in CATIE and nothing about me smelled any better than before (I wasn't seriously expecting it to, though I thought it might have an "asparagus" like effect on some things produced).

I really like the way kepel trees look.  They tend to be gnarled, that plus the califlori makes them look cool.  On my first trip to Indonesia I didn't notice the kepel trees, but on my second trip I kept seeing them (in various Kraton's and other sites).

[fruitlovers]

I don't think these are legends. We had a thread about this before. To summarize, Alan Carle in the book Botanical Ark states that it did have an effect on body odor. Chemical studies done on the plant confirm they have an effect on uric acid content of the body. There are different types of kepel which may work differently. Also it's not clear that the fruit is the most effective part of the tree in changing body odor.