Rambai

Overview

Native in Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Sumatra, Java and Borneo; also cultivated in this region and in Peninsular Thailand, the Philippines and Bali.. The tree is harvested from the wild as a local source of food, medicines and wood. It is sometimes cultivated as a garden plant in the tropics, being grown for its edible fruit.

Vernacular Names

Rambai (Indonesia), Rambai (Malay), Rambi (Philippines), Mafai-farang (Thai).

Agroecology

The natural habitat of B. motleyana is the tropical lowland forest and hills up to 900 m altitude. Plants succeed on alluvial soils, yellow clay, sand and limestone soils and position in full sun or light shade.  It prefers a mean annual rainfall in the range 1,500-3,500 mm,pH in the range of 5-6 and tolerating 4.5-6.5.

Morphology

• Trunks - 15-25 m tall, 40 cm in diameter, crown low, round, bushy; twigs, petioles and underside of leaves velvety.
• Leaves - obovate-lanceolate to elliptic, 20-35 cm × 8-17 cm, petioles 3-10 cm, stipules lanceolate.
• Flowers - ramiflorous, male racemes 13-20 cm long, flowers yellow in fascicles of 2-5, sepals 4-5, stamens 4-8, female racemes 25-60 cm long, flowers often in clusters, sepals 4-6.
• Fruits - globose to ellipsoid and turn brownish-yellow coloured when ripe, without splitting, 3-seeded berries, raised glands present, glabrous to densely hairy outside, glabrous inside, greenish yellow to white.
• Seeds - ellipsoid, laterally flattened. Each seed is covered with sweet tasting aril which is translucent white to light brown.

Cultivation

• By seeds - when sown fresh it usually germinates in a few days.
• By air layering.
• By grafting.

Chemical Constituents

Saponin, tannin, alkaloid, phenolic, flavan (catechin), flavonoid compound, terpenes and terpenoids.

Traditional Medicinal Uses

• Fiber content found abundantly in rambai fruit helps in proper functioning of the digestive system.
• The peel extract possessed antimicrobial activity since it inhibited the growth of S. aureus, B. cereus, B. subtilis, E. coli, Proteus vulgaris, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
• Rambai fruit can also be used to prevent cancer.
• The bark is used in traditional medicine for the treatment of eye diseases was extracted by maceration in ethanol and aqueous. Also used as an ingredient of a concoction of many ingredients and administered internally after childbirth in protective medicaments
• The fruit is able to cure several skin diseases such as itching, panu, scabies, and also ringworm.