Some pics and notes on Pouteria torta from one particular tree in the South Hilo district of Hawai'i island around 100m elevation.
Here's the tree with its proud papa, my friend Kim. It was probably planted less than 10 years ago, exact age unknown. Kim said he might've gotten the seed from Oscar, but he doesn't remember for sure. It's been fruiting for several years. Kim told me that when it was really small somebody ran over it with a lawn mower and it was reduced to almost nothing, but it grew back into a beautiful, productive tree.
It fruits twice a year I think. This current fruiting is maybe about 200 fruits.
The outside has a sparse layer of very soft fuzz that can be easily washed off or ignored.
The size of the fruits vary by about 1cm in diameter. This sampling of fruit is representative of the largest size. These 11 fruits ranged from 48mm to 56mm in diameter.
So far I've seen exactly one seed in every fruit. The seeds are about 25mm in length typically. The anomalous small one in this pictured batch came from one of the larger fruits. A negligibly small amount of flesh sticks to the seed, just like abiu, and quite unlike the problematic cases like jaboticaba, santol, pulasan, etc.
The flavor is fantastic, an elite fruit very similar to Pouteria caimito and Chrysophyllum caimito, very sweet, delicate, zero sourness. A small bit of latex on the lips is a trivial nuisance, slightly worse than a typical abiu. Whereas an abiu has a mostly gelatinous texture, the torta is a bit spongy and more like C. caimito. Sometimes I wonder if the flavor is even better than abiu. I don't identify a caramel flavor like abiu, but it's hard to pin down those subtle sensations. Unlike abiu, the boundary between tasty flesh and unappealing rind is slightly murky, so I occasionally scrape a little bit of rind with my spoon. It's mildly bitter, but not unpleasant at all, and not anything like the meal-destroying foulness of accidentally ingested slivers of mangosteen rind.
The fruit show very little damage from fruit flies. There are some abiu trees a few hundred meters away that get ravaged by fruit flies. The shelf life is long, just like abiu. They can sit in the fridge for a few weeks in excellent condition.