Botanical, Benefits, and Content of Kawista

Kawista is a plant which includes oranges originating from India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Indo-China which is then cultivated in Indonesia, especially in Java and Bali.

Local name

English: Wood apple, elephant apple
Java: Kawista, Kinco
Bali: Leprosy

Benefits

Cooked fruit flesh is usually mixed with sugar and then eaten like sherbet and seeds. Some kawista fruit commodities are processed into syrup. Kawista can also be used for creams derived from processed meat.

Kawista fruit that has been cooked can be used as a medicine, among others, as a fever, tonic, and can be used as a medicine for stomach pain. Thorns and kawista bark are found in various traditional medicinal herbs in the Indo-Chinese region for excessive menstrual medication, liver disorders, animal bites and stings, and for nausea drugs.

Kawista wood can be used for home building materials, poles and agricultural furniture. The sap of the Kawista tree that comes from bark also has benefits as a medicine.

Content

The composition of the kawista fruit is about one third of the total fruit. Fresh fruit contains 3-5% pectin. Each 100 g of Kawista fruit contains: 74 g of water, 8 g of protein, 1.5 g of fat, and 7.5 g of carbohydrate. Each 100 g of edible seeds contains: 4 g of water, 26 g of protein, 27 g of fat, and 35 g of carbohydrate. Dried kawista fruit meat contains 15% citric acid and a small amount of acid, potassium, calcium, and iron. Kawista wood has a yellowish-white color, is hard, rather heavy, and has rough fibers, but its wood veins are tight and can be polished to shiny.

Botany

Kawista habitus is a small tree and its leaves can decay, its height can reach 12 meters, has many branches and is slender in shape, there are sharp and straight spines up to 4 cm long. Kawista compound leaves with a length of up to 12 cm, odd finned with rakhis and narrow winged stems; leaflets face each other, 2-3 pairs of leaflets have a breech ovoid shape, up to 4 cm long, there are oil glands and if the leaves are squeezed there will be a slight aroma. Male flowers and perfect flowers are five in number, have white, green or reddish orange, generally clustered in sagging inflorescence lying on the ends of twigs or in the armpit of leaves. The fruit type is buni, with hard skin, and has a diameter of up to 10 cm; the surface of the fruit skin is scaly, loose, with whitish color; the fragrant flesh has many slimy seeds. The seeds are 5-6 mm long and hairy, with thick and green seeds; epigeal germination. The tiller is slender, slightly zigzagged; 1-4 first leaf form single leaf Kawista tree shows a simple development pattern, which is leafy, flowering, and fruiting in the same year. In the Southeast Asia region, the leaves of the kawista plant are generally deciduous in January, then flowering begins in February or March, then ripens fruit in October or November. Trees grow rather slowly and will not produce fruit when they are 15 years or older.

Ecology

Kawista trees can live in monsoon tropics or in conditions that are dry at times. This plant can grow to an altitude of 450 meters above sea level.