The Essential Fruit

Wood apple, which is known as bael in Hindi, is a fruit enriched with health benefits.

Its tree also has religious significance in India. Wood apple, whose scientific name is Aegle marmelos, is a fruit borne by the wood apple tree, whose leaves are used in worship of Lord Shiva. The tree is native to Indian subcontinent and South-east Asia.

Wood apple is a green to golden coloured fruit with a hard shell and a soft orange coloured pulp, with a lot of seeds and fibre. The fruit tastes like a mixture of papaya, mango and lime with a slight bitter aftertaste. It is a seasonal fruit found in summers, usually during the month of May to July, mainly across the Indian subcontinent and South-east Asia.

It is found across India in lower Himalayas, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Haryana and Punjab. This fruit is also found in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt and the Caribbean Islands.

Limited Usage in India

In the hot scorching summers of India, cool or chilled wood apple juice can come across as a refreshing beverage. In fact, that is the most common usage of this delicious fruit in India. It is usually sold as a refreshing drink by street vendors across north India, who call it as bael sherbet. In some parts of Punjab the dried bael powder is used in making bael panjiri.