Garcinia

The fruit is edible but is rather sour. The seeds yield up to 17% oil.

Some scholars have reduced Garcinia pictoria Buchanan-Hamilton (Mem. Wern. Nat. Hist. Soc. 5: 346. 1826) to this species; however, G. pictoria Buchanan-Hamilton has 4-merous, solitary, sessile flowers, 4-cleft stigmas, and 4-angled fruit, so it is regarded as distinct.

Trees 8-10 m tall, 15-45 cm in diam. Bark gray-brown. Branches numerous, slender, decussate, horizontal but usually ± distally pendulous, twigs distinctly angled. Petiole robust, V-shaped and somewhat clasping at base, 1.5-2.5 cm, angled and transversely wrinkled when dry, those of terminal 1 or 2 pairs on branchlet usually rose-colored; leaf blade shiny, elliptic or oblong to oblong-lanceolate, (14-)20-34 × (4-)6-12 cm, thickly leathery, midvein robust, raised on both surfaces; veins dense, to 35-40 pairs, near margin arching and anastomosing; tertiary veins and veinlets conspicuous, base ± broadly cuneate, margin involute, apex acute to obtuse, rarely acuminate. Corymbose cyme (2-)5-10(-14)-flowered, arising from leafless axils; peduncle 6-12 mm. Pedicels 1.8-3 cm. Flowers 5-merous, only female observed. Sepals and petals 3 large and 2 small, apparently ciliate. Staminode fascicles 5, ca. 3 mm, complanate, united below, upper parts free, each fascicle with 2-5 staminodes; fasciclodes 5, square, ca. 1 mm, strongly rugose. Ovary globose, usually 5-loculed; style short, ca. 1 mm; stigma peltate, apex concave, (3-)5-cleft. Mature berry yellow, globose or ovoid, sometimes oblique, 3-5 cm in diam., smooth or sometimes with orbicular lenticels, apiculate, sepals and staminal bundles usually persistent. Seeds 1-4, oblong or ovoid; testa brown, smooth. Fl. Mar-May, fr. Aug-Nov. 2n = 72, 80, 96.

E. Himalaya (Nepal to Assam), India, Burma, Thailand, S. W. China (Yunnan), Malaya, Andaman and Nicobar Isl.

Guangdong (cultivated), SW Guangxi, S, SW, and W Yunnan [Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Japan (introduced and cultivated), Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam].

200-500 m

Dense humid forests of valleys or on hills; (100-)600-1000(-1400) m.

Garcinia pictoria (Roxburgh) Engler (1925), not Buchanan-Hamilton (1826); G. tinctoria W. Wight (1909); G. tinctoria (Candolle) Dunn (1915); Xanthochymus pictorius Roxburgh; X. tinctorius Candolle.

Garcinia xanthochymus, the false mangosteen, gamboge, yellow mangosteen, Himalayan Garcinia, or sour mangosteen is a species of mangosteens found from India, southern China, and Japan through Indochina to Peninsular Malaysia at elevations of 0 - 1400 meters. Plants are found growing in humid forests of valleys or on hills. It is locally known as defol (ডেফল) in Bengal, tepor tenga (টেপৰ টেঙা) in Assam, and heirangoi (হৈরাংগোই) in Manipur.