Assam apple

Survives zone 8 through 9

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Small apple-like fruit, slightly acid and refreshing once fully ripe (bland to sour when picked early) — eaten fresh, pickled, or made into jam, juice and wine in its native Northeast India and eastern Himalaya.

Hardiness

Zone 8–9

Habit

Tree

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Summer–autumn

Mature size

Small semi-evergreen tree 4–10 m

Light

Full sun

Soil pH

6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)

Environment

Temperate

Native range

The eastern Himalaya and the hills of Northeast India, through Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, southern China (Yunnan) and northern Vietnam, at roughly 1,000–2,500 m.

Status

Both wild and cultivated

Years to fruit

2–4 yrs

Growth speed

Moderate

Spacing

600 cm (236 in) apart — about 36 m² (388 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Alternate, narrowly ovate to lance-shaped 6–12 cm; the leaves on vigorous young shoots are often lobed while those on older wood are entire, so one tree can look like two. White-woolly beneath when young.

Root system

Deep and wide-spreading, suited to the thin hill soils of its range — part of why it is used locally as a rootstock for apple and pear on ground that would not carry them on their own roots.

Fruit description

A yellow apple-like pome 3–5 cm, occasionally to 7 cm, waxy-skinned with persistent calyx lobes at the eye. Hard and sour picked early; fully ripe or after a spell in store it turns pleasantly sub-acid and aromatic. In Northeast India and Vietnam — where it is sơn tra or táo mèo — it is more often pickled, dried or fermented into wine than eaten out of hand.

Propagation

Seed after cold stratification, or grafting onto its own seedlings. It is itself grown as a rootstock in the region.

Pollination

Self-fertile

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.