Botany
Sapote is a tall, smooth tree, 7 to 17 meters high. Leaves are leathery, shiny, thick, oblong to elliptic-oblong, 10 to 20 cm long, and borne on rather short stalks. Flowers are dioecious, occurring singly in the axils of leaves and measuring from 1 to 1.5 cm long. Calyx is greenish, with broad truncate lobes. Corolla is tubular, lobed and white. Fruits is large, smooth, green, rounded, 9 to 12 cm in diameter, more or less depressed at its apex, enveloped at its base by a persistent calyx. The flesh of the fruit is yellowish, turning nearly black at maturity. Seeds are usually four and about 2 cm long.
Distribution
Occasionally planted in and about towns as an ornamental foliage and for its large edible fruit.
Nowhere spontaneous.
Introduced from Mexico during the early colonial period.
Parts used
Fruit, bark, leaves.
Uses
Edibility
In the Philippines, fruit is eaten in milk, cooked in pies (with lemon to counteract its mawkishness), or made into ice-cream.
Folkloric
In the Philippines, pounded bark and leaves are used as blistering plaster.
In Yucatan, decoction of leaves used for fevers.
Used as remedy for leprosy, ringworm and for itching.
Others
In the West Indies, unripe fruit is pounded and thrown into the water to narcotize the fish.
Availability
Wild-crafted.
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