What Fruit Is Wampee? A Complete Guide to This Distinctive Fruit
Wampee is one of the fruits of southern China, also known as huangdan, huangdanzi, huangduan and so on. It is a small tree of the genus Clausena in the family Rutaceae, native to southern China, with a history of more than 1,500 years in our country. It likes warm, humid and sunny environments. It has little requirement for soil. It is best planted in loose, fertile loam. In Hainan, both the flowering and fruiting periods are advanced by 1 to 2 months.
The wampee tree can reach 12 m in height. On the branchlets, leaf rachis, inflorescence rachis, and especially on the veins of the underside of unopened leaflets, there are many scattered, distinctly raised fine oil glands, and these parts are densely covered with short straight hairs. The leaves have 5 to 11 leaflets; the leaflets are ovate or ovate-elliptic, often oblique on one side, 6 to 14 cm long and 3 to 6 cm wide, with a nearly rounded or broadly wedge-shaped base, asymmetrical on the two sides, and wavy or shallowly round-toothed margins; the midvein on the leaf surface is often covered with short fine hairs; the petiolules are 4 to 8 mm long.
The wampee panicle is terminal. The flower buds are globose; the calyx lobes are broadly ovate, about 1 mm long, covered with short pubescence outside; the petals are oblong, about 5 mm long, covered with short hairs on both sides or hairless inside. The ovary is densely covered with straight long hairs; the disk is small and the ovary stalk is short. The fruit is round, elliptic or broadly ovate, 1.5 to 3 cm long and 1 to 2 cm wide, pale yellow to dark yellow, covered with fine hairs; the flesh is milky white and semi-transparent, with 1 to 4 seeds, and the cotyledons are dark green. The flowering period is April to May, and the fruiting period is July to August.
As a high-quality fruit, wampee can be eaten fresh, and its fruit can also be processed into jelly, jam, candied fruit, fruit cakes and refreshing drinks, or preserved in salt or sugar. Therefore, it has long been known among the people as the “treasure among fruits”. The leaves and roots contain flavonoids, alkaloids, coumarins and phenolic compounds. The seeds are rich in oil, with an oil yield as high as 42%, and serve as an excellent lubricant.
Wampee is rich in vitamin C, sugars, organic acids and pectin. Both the peel and the seed can be used as medicine, with the effects of aiding digestion, resolving phlegm and regulating qi. They are used for indigestion, fullness and pain in the chest and diaphragm, phlegm-fluid cough and asthma and other conditions, and can also relieve stagnated heat and treat hernia pain. The leaves are pungent and cool in nature, with the effects of dispelling wind and releasing the exterior, removing phlegm and promoting the movement of qi. They are used to prevent and treat influenza, warm-disease fever, cough and asthma, water swelling and abdominal pain, malaria, difficult urination, heat-toxin scabies and ringworm and other conditions. The roots can treat qi pain and hernia pain.