Philippine Tree of the Month: Santol

 A beautiful local tree that's part of our everyday life is the common backyard tree, Santól (Sandoricum koetjape). Many people are familiar with this as it is one of the few tropical trees with random leaves that turn red before falling off. Its trunk is usually straight and can be sawed as lumber. In fact, Mang Pilô from whom we bought the farm, asked to cut three trees for lumber to make a new house before turning over the land to us, and a tall and regal santol tree was one of them (the other two were duhat and muláwin).

And who wouldn't know its fruit? I think everyone's grew up with it, peeled and eaten with rock salt, cringing from its slightly acidic taste just to get to the luscious whitish pulp at its core. To this day, it's such a simple pleasure to end a long, weekend lunch with a bowlful of santol, eating candy-like the sweet white pulp around the seeds. I guess it is for this reason some foreigners call this the lolly fruit!