Langsat (Lansium domesticum)
Langsat (Lansium domesticum) is a fruit-bearing tree in the family Meliaceae, native to the western Malaysia. It is common both wild and cultivated throughout the entire Southeast Asia. Apart from langsat, it is also known as lanzon, lanzone, lansone, lansa, langseh, langsep, or kokosan. Langsat tree is an erect, medium-sized, short and single-trunked tree, with slender and spreading branches, growing up to 15 m tall. The bark is red-brown or yellow-brown in color and furrow. It has pinnately compound leaves, 20-50 cm long with 5-7 altenate leaflets, obovate or elliptic-oblong, and pointed at both ends, 7-20 cm long. The leaves are slightly leathery, dark-green and glossy on the upper side, and paler and dull underneath, with a prominent midrib. The mostly-bisexual flowers are small, white or pale-yellow, fleshy, borne in simple or branched racemes, in solitary or in hairy clusters on the oldest branches and on the trunk, initially standing erect, and finally pendant, 10-30 cm long. The fruits are oval, ovoid-oblong or nearly round, 2.5-5 cm in diameter, and are borne in clusters of 2-30. Each fruit is covered by yellowish or pale brown, thick , leathery and velvety skin, and contains milky sap. Each fruit has 5-6 segmented, white, translucent, juicy flesh, sweet-sour in flavor. There are 1-3 seeds in a fruit, usually adhere more or less to the flesh, 2-2.5 cm long and 1.25-2 cm wide, green in color, and very bitter in taste. Some seeds may take up half to almost the entire volumn of the segment. The sweet juicy flesh contians sucrose, fructose, and glucose. Duku is the name for the larger-sized varieties of langsat. The size is nearly the size of a golf ball, sweeter, and with less sap in the peel or skin of the fruit. Dokong is another variety of langsat exported to Malaysia from Thailand. Dokong grows tighter in clusters, giving it a faceted shape, and is a much prefer fruit that langsat. Langsat is usually eaten fresh, or canned in syrup and make into candies. It is perishable and cannot be keep over 4 days in the room temperatures. In the Phillipines, seedless segments are dried like raisin. The fruit peel is dried and burned to repel mosquitoes.  Langsat (Lansium domesticum) Author: Mike Gonzalez (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported) | ||
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