Mangosteen

The mangosteen, also known as the purple mangosteen or mangostan, is a tropical evergreen tree that produces an edible fruit. Its original home is the Malay Peninsula and Borneo. People have been growing it across tropical Asia for a very long time, and it is now cultivated mainly in Southeast Asia, southwest India, and other warm regions where it has been introduced, such as Colombia, Puerto Rico, and Florida. The tree can reach anywhere from 6 to 25 meters in height.

The fruit is sweet and tangy, juicy, and somewhat fibrous, filled with fluid-packed vesicles. Its deep reddish-purple rind, or exocarp, is inedible when ripe.

Inside, the fragrant, edible flesh that surrounds each seed is the endocarp—the inner layer of the ovary. The seeds themselves are about the same size and shape as almonds. The genus Garcinia also includes other less-known fruit-bearing species, like the button mangosteen (G. prainiana) and the charichuelo (G. madruno).

Tree

The mangosteen tree needs steady warmth to thrive; prolonged exposure to temperatures below 0°C usually kills a mature plant, though it can recover from brief cold spells with damage only to new growth. In extreme south Florida, experienced growers have managed to grow and fruit this species outdoors.

Fruit

The fruit starts out pale green or almost white, forming without fertilization through a process called agamospermy. Over two to three months, the exocarp darkens to a deeper green and expands until it is 6–8 cm across, staying hard until a sudden ripening stage.

While immature, the rind’s chemistry—full of polyphenols like xanthones and tannins—makes it astringent, discouraging insects, fungi, viruses, bacteria, and animals. As the fruit ripens, the exocarp softens and changes color. Once growth stops, chlorophyll production slows, and the rind shifts from green to red-streaked to deep purple over about ten days, when the fruit’s eating quality is at its best.

After picking, the rind hardens depending on handling and humidity. In high humidity, it may stay soft for a week or more while the flesh is excellent. But after several more days, especially without refrigeration, the flesh can spoil without any obvious sign on the outside, so using rind hardness to judge freshness in the first two weeks after harvest is unreliable. A soft, yielding rind, like when the fruit is fresh from the tree, usually means it’s good.

The edible white endocarp is the same shape and size as a tangerine, 4–6 cm across. The number of flesh segments matches the number of stigma lobes on the fruit’s tip; more segments usually mean fewer seeds. These wedge-shaped segments number 4–8, rarely 9, with the larger ones containing apomictic seeds that are unpalatable unless roasted. Since mangosteen is a non-climacteric fruit, it doesn’t ripen after picking and must be eaten soon after harvest.

Often called a subtle delicacy, the flesh has a very mild aroma—about 1/400th of the chemical compounds found in fragrant fruits. Its scent includes notes of caramel, grass, and butter, from volatile components like hexyl acetate, hexenol, and α-copaene. In mangosteen wine, ethyl octanoate, ethyl hexanoate, and 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol are also detected.

Origins and history

The cultivated mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana var. mangostana) is dioecious, but no male trees are known. It produces viable seeds through apomixis, meaning all embryos are clones of the mother tree.

This long history of cultivation makes its original wild range hard to pin down. The domesticated variety likely descended from wild populations of G. mangostana var. malaccensis and G. mangostana var. borneensis, native to the Malay Peninsula and Borneo respectively—both of which still have male trees. There may also have been limited hybridization with close relatives like Garcinia penangiana and Garcinia venulosa.

Mangosteens are prized for their juicy, delicate texture and slightly sweet-and-sour flavor. They have been grown in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Borneo, Sumatra, mainland Southeast Asia, and the Philippines since ancient times. A 15th-century Chinese record, the Yingya Shenglan, described the fruit as mang-chi-shih (from the Malay manggis), a Southeast Asian plant with white flesh and a delicious sweet-and-sour taste. Linnaeus included a description of the mangosteen in his Species Plantarum in 1753, and it was introduced into English greenhouses in 1855.