The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Dovyalis hebecarpa
Also called Kitambilla, Ceylon Goosberry, Ketembilla, Kitembilla
In Singapore: Ceylon Gooseberry, Kitambilla (Cultivated in Singapore)
A thorny shrub or small tree from Sri Lanka and southern India, grown mainly for its tart edible berries. It is dioecious, so you need both male and female plants, or a female that sets fruit without pollination.
Dovyalis hebecarpa, with common names Ceylon gooseberry, ketembilla, and kitambilla, is a plant in the genus Dovyalis, native to Sri Lanka and southern India. The fruit are often eaten fresh, or made into jam. Some cultivars have been selected for being thornless (making harvesting easier) and for larger fruit.
The tropical apricot, or ketcot, is a hybrid between D. hebecarpa and D. abyssinica that was developed in Florida in 1953 and is also cultivated for its fruit.
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dovyalis hebecarpa by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
