The Abandoned Fruits in Indonesia

In my childhood, as a villager, I lived my life mostly playing within the trees, shrubs and vines. My home is next to the paddy fields. That is why some wild vines and shrubs are very familiar to me, such as wild passiflora and physalis. Beside of that, my parents once had a huge yard. Various kind of mango trees were planted there. There were also jackfruit, jambu, papaya, guava tree, etc. One time, my parents planted other kind of fruiting tree such as rambutan or avocado. But because of some problems in the soil, these kind of trees never bear a fruit. So they were just cut down.

What I want to say is I feel like I know almost all of fruiting trees (at least my knowledge is better than others who live in the city). But, hello, I was wrong. I visitied Banjarbaru about 2 weeks ago and found two kind of fruits that really new for me. They called them buah kecapi (wild mangosteen) and buah mentega (velvet apple). I just felt very curious why I did not even know about these fruits!

Then I remember that one of my office colleagues told me that in his hometown, many teenagers (todays generation) did not have knowledge about local fruits anymore because people just cut them down for the logs. These kind of fruiting trees usually have unfavorable characteristics. Thus, not many people want to eat these fruits anymore. For example, in the case of buah kecapi, it tastes sour and sweet (a little bit), also the flesh stick to the seed, so we almost can not enjoy the flesh. That is why people do not sell and distribute it anymore around the country. As the result, todays generation never know that this fruit is exist.

As I remember my childhood memories and also from the information from my friends on facebook (I made a survey about unpopular fruits on facebook), there are several fruiting trees that also already abandoned because of their unfavorable traits.
1. Juwet (Synzygium cumini)
2. Cerme (Phyllantus acidus)
3. Kepundung (Baccaurea sp.)
4. Jambu mawar (Syzygium jambos)
5. Kepel (Stelechocarpus burahol)
6. many more (still searching… :D)

So, why is it matter to me? Well, as an Indonesian, I think it is very important for me to respect indigenous fruiting trees, by study them and preserve their existence in Indonesia. Our responsibility today is how to make them popular among those imported fruits. Moreover, it is also our responsibility to make the local farmers prefer to plant indigenous fruits. The question is how to change their unfavorable characteristics? It seems very difficult, but at least, by knowing them, later we have willingness to solve these problems.