Memories of Belunu

It is currently a fruit heaven in Sabah, Borneo. You can find local fruits sold by village folks in the market or at stalls along the roadside. This is the time the Durian, Rambutan, Jackfruit, Mangosteen, Belunu, Tarap and Langsat are sold cheap making it fruit heaven season for those local fruity lovers.

The weather is quite hot making it the perfect time for these fruits ripe and harvested. These local fruit season usually happen between the month of July to September and December to January.

Belunu or Bundu

One fruit I wanted to talk about is the Belunu or its saintific name Mangifera rufocostata. In Sabah, we call this fruit, Belunu or Bundu.

I bought this fruit at Tamu Donggongon, Penampang (a wet market) last Friday. I got a good bargain, the lady at the market sold it RM3.00 for five piece.

If you never taste this fruit before, let me tell you, its delicious. Outside it may look like Mango but, inside it tastes like Soursop. It's fleshy, juicy and sweet. I prefers to eat it when the flesh is still hard. Belunu is a brownish-green fruit that size up to 10cm in diameter and contain one single large seed.

Memories of Belunu

The Belunu tree can grow really tall and it can produce hundreds of fruits. It really hard to pluck the fruits from the tree, unless of course if you are not afraid of heights. Usually we wait for the fruit to naturally fall down by itself.

My village used to have several Belunu trees. When I was a kid, I and several other kids will sit below the Belunu tree and wait for the fruits to fall down. Its kinda funny how we run toward it as soon as we heard the "thud" sound as it hits the ground. Imagine five kids looking for one fruit. If you're lucky, you will find it first. Imagine how disappointed those other four kids. They have to wait for the next Belunu fruit to fall to try their luck again. However, sometime we make a deal to take turn to get the falling Belunu fruits. This could go on like hour and hours.

Sometime we will take alternative to throw a solid wood at the Belunu fruits. Its way up high about twenty feet. Maybe this is why we used to be skinny and tough then compare to kid nowaday..LOL.