Jambu

This is a rather confusing general word for several quite different types of fruit. Why they all got lumped together I am not quite sure, but they must have something in common, since it is regarded as perfectly sensible to walk into a shop and say, ‘I want to buy some jambu,’ though the shopkeeper will then have to ask you which kind you are after. Burkill says that jambu is a Sanskritic word, and that among the Malaysians it tends, on the whole, to indicate a cultivated plant (especially of the genus Eugenia) rather than a wild one. Here are some of the commoner jambu: