THE MANGOSTEEN ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION

Origin and Distribution

The place of origin of the mangosteen is unknown but is believed to be the Sunda Islands and the Moluccas; still, there are wild trees in the forests of Kemaman, Malaya. Corner suggests that the tree may have been first domesticated in Thailand, or Burma. It is much cultivated in Thailand–where there were 9,700 acres (4,000 ha) in 1965–also in Kampuchea, southern Vietnam and Burma, throughout Malaya and Singapore. The tree was planted in Ceylon about 1800 and in India in 1881. There it succeeds in 4 limited areas–the Nilgiri Hills, the Tinnevelly district of southern Madras, the Kanya-kumani district at the southernmost tip of the Madras peninsula, and in Kerala State in southwestern India. The tree is fairly common only in the provinces of Mindanao and Sulu (or Jolo) in the Philippines. It is rare in Queensland, where it has been tried many times since 1854, and poorly represented in tropical Africa (Zanzibar, Ghana, Gabon and Liberia). There were fruiting trees in greenhouses in England in 1855. The mangosteen was introduced into Trinidad from the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, England, between 1850 and 1860 and the first fruit was borne in 1875. It reached the Panama Canal Zone and Puerto Rico in 1903 but there are only a few trees in these areas, in Jamaica, Dominica and Cuba, and some scattered around other parts of the West Indies. The United States Department of Agriculture received seeds from Java in 1906 (S.P.I. #17146). A large test block of productive trees has been maintained at the Lancetilla Experimental Station at Tela, Honduras, for many years. Quite a few trees distributed by the United Fruit Company long ago have done well on the Atlantic coast of Guatemala. In 1924, Dr. Wilson Popenoe saw the mangosteen growing at one site in Ecuador. In 1939, 15,000 seeds were distributed by the Canal Zone Experiment Gardens to many areas of tropical America. It is probable that only a relatively few seedlings survived. It is known that many die during the first year. Dr. Victor Patiño has observed flourishing mangosteen trees at the site of an old mining settlement in Mariquita, Colombia, in the Magdalena Valley and the fruits are sold on local markets. Dierberger Agricola Ltda., of Sao Paulo, included the mangosteen in their nursery catalog in 1949.

Despite early trials in Hawaii, the tree has not become well acclimatized and is still rare in those islands. Neither has it been successful in California. It encounters very unfavorable soil and climate in Florida. Some plants have been grown for a time in containers in greenhouses. One tree in a very protected coastal location and special soil lived to produce a single fruit and then succumbed to winter cold.

Despite the oft-repeated Old World enthusiasm for this fruit, it is not always viewed as worth the trouble to produce. In Jamaica, it is regarded as nice but overrated; not comparable to a good field-ripe pineapple or a choice mango.

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