Saba comorensis

Saba comorensis is a species of flowering plant in the Apocynaceae family. It is commonly called bungo fruit (pl. mabungo), mbungo, or rubber vine and is widespread across most of tropical Africa as well as in Madagascar and Comoros. It grows in Tanzania and Somalia, for example on the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean. The species belongs to the genus Saba from the family Apocynaceae. The fruit looks similar to an orange with a hard orange peel but when opened it contains a dozen or so pips, which have the same texture as a mango seed with the fibres and juices all locked in these fibres. The fruit also makes a delicious juice drink which has been described as tasting "somewhere between a mango, an orange and a pineapple" [[The Times] retrieved 30 July 2009] "The highlight is a juice from the bungo fruit, indigenous to Zanzibar, which has a taste somewhere between a mango, an orange and a pineapple." The aromatic juice of the bungo fruit is also popular and highly appreciated on Pemba Island and other parts of coastal Tanzania. Not only in the Tanzanian Mahale Mountains National Park, S. comorensis is dispersed by chimpanzees.James V. Wakibara. Abundance and dispersion of some chimpanzee-dispersed fruiting plants at Mahale, Tanzania. African Journal of Ecology Vol. 43, Issue 2, pp. 107–113, May 2005. Article first published online: 27 MAY 2005. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2028.2005.00553.x

No narrative description available for this taxon yet.