KETEMBILLA
DOVYALIS HEBECARPA. Family: SALICACEAE Other names include ceylon gooseberry, Puerto Rican cranberry & kitambilla
Ketembilla, is a plant in the genus Dovyalis, native to Sri Lanka and southern India. The fruit are often eaten fresh, or made into jam. Some cultivars have been selected for being thorn less (making harvesting easier) and for larger fruit. Here in Puerto Rico, they are often called Puerto Rican cranberries or tropical apricots. The tree takes about 2-3 years to fruit. Fruit is quite juicy, extremely acidic and is mostly used for making preserves, jelly, jam and juice.
They are more pleasant raw than regular cranberries. To us, the flavor is a tart mixture of blackcurrant with a hint of citrus. The skin is the most bitter part. The fruit is green when young turning to orangey brown to maroon-purple when mature. The skin is coated with short, grayish-green, velvety hairs, unpleasant in the mouth that encloses purple-red colored flesh. The fruit normally has acidic flavor and slightly sweeter also sour and astringent in taste. The pulp is very juicy, extremely acid, purple-red, enclosing 9–12 pubescent seeds about 6 mm long. Every fruit contains roughly 5-9 small hairy seeds. Since Ceylon gooseberry has acidic flavor it is mostly used in making preserves, jelly, jam and juice.
The ketembilla is typically dioecious, though occasionally bisexual, indicating that individual plants are either male or female. This characteristic necessitates cross-pollination between the two genders, requiring the presence of both male and female plants for successful cropping. Trees can be pruned into either a large shrub or a small tree, making them well-suited for forming protective, edible windbreak hedges due to their large thorns and resistance to strong winds. In regions where the related Kei Apple, a similar protective, edible hedge, might pose invasiveness concerns, the Ceylon Gooseberry offers a valuable alternative.
When provided with sufficient water, the tree produces an abundance of fruits, borne on an imposing, spiny hedge.
A few fun facts about ketembilla:
Ceylon Gooseberries are packed with vitamins and minerals that your body needs. They have a lot of vitamin C, which helps the nervous system, helps wounds heal, and makes collagen. Also, they have vitamin A, which is important for good eyesight, healthy skin, and a strong immune system.
Antioxidants like vitamin C, flavonoids, and tannins are all in these gooseberries. Antioxidants help get rid of dangerous free radicals in the body. This lowers the risk of oxidative stress and chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease.
The fibre in Ceylon Gooseberries helps you feel full and keeps you feeling full for longer. This can help you lose weight by stopping you from eating too much and keeping track of the calories you take in.
Because they have a lot of water, Ceylon Gooseberries can help you stay hydrated, especially when it’s hot or when you’re doing a lot of physical activity.
In Hawaii, there are recipes for juice, spiced jelly, ketembilla-papaya jam, ketembilla-guava jelly, and ketembilla-apple butter.
The ketembilla is native to Ceylon. It was introduced into the United States by Dr. David Fairchild and was one of the few fruits he admitted he never liked very much. The first fruiting specimens in the western hemisphere were apparently those growing in southern Florida. P.J. Wester carried seeds to the northern islands of the Philippines where it began fruiting in 1916. From Florida, also, the plant was introduced into the Atkins Garden of Harvard University at Cienfuegos, Cuba. Seeds from the Garden were shipped to the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association in 1920, and to the Lancetilla Experimental Garden at Tela, Honduras, in 1927. Seeds from Florida were supplied to the Mayaguez and Trujillo Experimental Stations in Puerto Rico where the plants were 16 ft (5 in) high by 1929 and 1930. Plants were distributed widely throughout the Hawaiian Islands and use of the fruits was officially encouraged.
