Hello again.
As promised here are the photos and comments on my second fruit of Ubajai… this fruit was left to fully ripen on the tree and the purpose was to check the “strange and repulsive odor”, that some reported on the overripe fruits of this species.
This fruit fell of the tree by itself, so no doubt it was properly ripe and was even a little bit bruised, probably from the fall…
And I’m glad to report that I enjoy the smell of it too!
The smell was not very intense, nothing like guavas that can fill an entire room with the scent… this one you have to take it close to your nose to properly feel it… I agree that we can call it a “strange” smell because there is nothing like it, but I will never consider it repulsive… in fact I returned home sniffing on the fruit all the way back... it has an addictive smell!
Here are the photos of this “big boy”:
This one had 3 seeds, and in fact there is a space between seeds and flesh but mine seem to have a whitish spongy / fibry material around the seeds that occupies most of this hollow space… the flesh is more than 1cm thick, "canary yellow" and extremely juicy… and the seeds seem to have a thick/hard woody coat as Luc reported earlier... to me they resembled the seeds of some palms... this woody coat doesn't seem very common on myrtaceae seeds (?) but I didn't scarify or did any other pre-treatment to the seeds received from Brazil and 100% sprouted as far as I can remember...
After all this photo-shooting the fruit was divided and kindly offered to the public at home... and the results are:
Me and my younger boy (08 years old) appreciated it... my son specially appreciated the juice and he sucked all of it from the flesh leaving only the fibers..
My wife and my older son (12 yo) didn't liked it... the general opinion was "too sour"... but both recognized that the smell was good!
So it's clear this fruit will not please everybody's tastes... but all in all I still see more "pros" than "cons"!...
and I can see some great things coming out of here on the future with just a little bit of added sugar (juices, smoothies, etc)... hopefully this experience will continue next years!
But my big doubt remains:
Are all Ubajai fruits like this?... can someone give other opinions?... Luc, can you post photos of your ripe fruits cut in half just to compare with mine?
I went to look again to the photos on Lorenzi's book and no doubt there are many differences... Were the Lorenzi's fruits just smaller and under-ripe and can that explain all the differences?... questions remain!
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