Mamones Fruit or Mamon Chino

Everytime we take a walk around San Miguel we come back with armloads of whatever fruit is dripping off of the trees at our neighbors houses. Yesterday was no exception and this morning we are making our breakfast out of Rambutans, Mamones or Ngoh, depending on where you are from. The rambutans originally came from Malaysia (really close to China) and you need to suck to get the fruit out so Tico’s call them Mamon Chino or Suck China. We don’t attempt to understand it we just accept it and enjoy the tasy Mamones.

I’m not exactly sure what Mother Nature was thinking giving this fruit an incredibly effective protective outside barrier. The outside skin is made up of rubbery hairs that function as shock absorbers. I have thrown this fruit as hard as I can at a tree and the skin never breaks. It seems like the design should be used by NASA. The fruit inside is almost like a grape but is sweeter and a bit more stringy. There is a pit instead of little seeds. It has Iron, a hign Vitamin C content and various other nutritive properties that can be found on-line. I was surprised that there were so many sites with info about these things.

We have planted this Mamon Tree but will have to wait for about three years for it to mature enough to give fruit. The tree was also a gift from a neighbor. If you wanted to start your own tree just look for mamones that have a little nub at the end. These are the seeds of the tree. You can still eat the fruit from around the seed before you plant it.

Kimba loves them. When we toss her a mamone with the shell on she doesn’t know what to do with it but if we open it she eats them seeds and all.