Zabon

Our neighbor just dropped off some zabon. That's what everybody in Hawaii calls this gigantic citrus fruit. I've loved it my whole life and was saddened when I discovered grapefruit has a reaction to my cholesterol medication, Lipitor. Having just been put on high blood pressure medication a week ago, Art was rather disappointed when my mother pointed out that it could interact with his blood pressure medication, Lysinopril. Up to now he's been the only one at our house who can still eat it and he hasn't exactly hid the fact that he's quite happy to have it all to himself. I just checked WebMD and it looks like he CAN still have it... all to himself.

We've seen these zabon-pomello fruit trees around the neighborhood and it always surprises me how its branches can hold such a heavy fruit.

Here's some information about zabon that I got off the web.

Pomelo, Pummelo, shaddock, Adam's apple
Pamplemousse (French), Pompelmuse (German), toronja (Spanish/Portuguese), pompelmus (Danish), pummelo (Finnish), kabbad (Arabic), chakotra (Hindi), Batabi lemu (Bengali), bombilimas (Tamil), you zi (Chinese), buntan/zabon (Japanese), limau abong/limau Bali (Malay), jeruk Bali (Indonesian), suha (Philippines)
(Citrus grandis or C. maxima, C. Aurantium var. grandis, C. decumana -- Family Rutaceae)

Pomellos resemble grapefruit, but they are a species in their own right and are an ancestor of the grapefruit, and not a hybrid. They are sometimes called shaddocks after the sea captain who brought them from Polynesia to the West Indies in the mid 17th century. They still grow wild in the region of Malaysia and Indonesia, where they probably originated. There is evidence that the pomelo grew in China as early as 100 BCE and spread westwards in the wake of other, more prized, citrus fruits. Arabs took it to Spain, where it was cultivated on a small scale. The European climate is too cool for it to grow successfully. The tree grows to between twenty and forty feet, producing fuzzy leaves like those of the orange tree and large white flowers. The large, pear-shaped fruit has lemon-yellow skin and pale white or red flesh. It is much larger than grapefruit, with thick yellow dimpled skin, and can measure up to a foot in diameter; although much of its bulk is the thick, loose skin.