Chewing Gum Fruit Live Plant (Thespesia garckeana)

Chewing Gum fruit or Snot Apple is an evergreen or semi-deciduous shrub or small, spreading tree usually growing 3 - 13 metres tall but with occasional specimens to 20 metres.Gathered from the wild, it provides food, medicines, fibre and fuel. The edible fruit is sometimes sold in local markets.The tree is sometimes protected when growing around farms and homesteads, and is also planted for shade and as an ornamental.
The ripe fruit carpels are edible.They can be eaten raw if gathered green and juicy and the rind is peeled off. A sweet, mucilaginous pulp, especially if harvested before it is quite ripe. It is chewed or sucked like chewing gum, producing a sweet glutinous slime. The fruit is often dried and stored for later use. When boiled, they are widely used as a relish or made into porridge. The fruits have a very high energy content, about 8.1 kJ/g. The yellowish to brownish-green fruit is an almost spherical, woody capsule, 25 - 40mm in diameter, with dense short hairs. It is divided into five sections, each section containing a sticky pulp and one seed. The fruits remain hanging on the tree after they have ripened.

Common names: African chewing gum, goron tula, snot apple, tree hibiscus, mutohwe (Shona), nkole (Sri Lanka), uXakuxaku (isiNdebele) and morojwa (Setswana).