Ambarella
Spondias dulcis · Anacardiaceae · also known as June plum, Hevi, Golden apple, Kedondong, Pomme cythère
A crunchy tropical fruit with pineapple-mango tartness — eaten green and sour with salt, or ripe and sweet — hiding a spiky fibrous pit at its core.
At a glance
- Taste
- Green fruit is crisp, sour, and refreshing, like a tart apple crossed with pineapple; ripe fruit softens and sweetens toward mango and pineapple. A distinctive spiny pit makes the flesh cling in fibers.
- Origin
- Melanesia and Polynesia; spread across tropical Asia and the Americas
- Grown in
- Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Fiji
- Peak season
- Summer, Autumn
Sensory & practical profile
Taste fingerprint
- Sweetness
- Tartness
- Aroma
- Juiciness
- Firmness
Approximate, at peak ripeness · 0–5
- Ripe when
- Hard and green for sour-crunchy eating; turning golden and slightly soft for sweet.
- How to eat
- Green with salt and chili like green mango; slice around the spiky fibrous pit.
- Typical price
- Budget
It travels under a dozen names — June plum, hevi, kedondong, pomme cythère — a sign of how widely it spread.
How to select & store
Picking a ripe one
For sour-crunchy eating, choose hard green fruit; for sweet, choose fruit turning golden and slightly soft. Avoid bruised or overly soft ones unless you want them ripe.
Storing it
Green fruit keeps a week or more at room temperature; ripe fruit softens fast and should be eaten within days. The flesh can be sliced (around the spiny pit) and frozen.
Practical uses
🍽️ Culinary
- Green and crunchy with salt, chili, and shrimp paste, like green mango
- Rojak and sour fruit salads across Southeast Asia
- Juices and drinks (Jamaican and Sri Lankan June-plum juice)
- Ripe fruit in chutneys, jams, and pickles
🌿 Health & traditional
- Leaves and fruit used in Pacific and Southeast Asian folk remedies; the fruit valued as a vitamin C food
🎎 Cultural
- Known by a dozen names across the tropics — June plum, hevi, kedondong, pomme cythère
- A backyard sour-fruit snack from the Philippines to the Caribbean
Ambarella travels under a small library of names — June plum in Jamaica, hevi in the Philippines, kedondong in Indonesia, pomme cythère in the French tropics — a sign of how widely this Pacific native spread. Whatever it is called, it is a crunch-and-sour fruit first: eaten hard and green, dipped in salt and chili, exactly the way green mango and santol are enjoyed across Southeast Asia.
Two fruits, one tree
Green, ambarella is crisp and tart with a pineapple-apple bite and plenty of vitamin C — the snacking and rojak stage. Left to ripen golden and soft, it turns sweeter and more fragrant, drifting toward mango and pineapple, and moves into juices, chutneys, and jams. The one constant is the core: a hard, spiny pit that grips the flesh in fibers, so you slice around it rather than through.
Sour-fruit culture
Like tamarind, ambarella belongs to the tropics’ love of deliberately sour fruit — refreshing in heat, brightened by salt, and turned into tangy drinks from Colombo to Kingston. It is humble, ubiquitous, and, for anyone who grew up near a tree, a taste of childhood.
