[citation needed] The plant is valued for its small (between one, and one and a quarter centimeter in diameter) round, sweet yellow fruit which is strongly scented.

Sometimes cultivated for its edible fruits, the tree is native and abundant in the wild, sometimes in extensive stands, in open pine forests and grassy savannas, from central Mexico, through Central America, to Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil; it also occurs in Trinidad, Barbados, Curaçao, St. Martin, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and throughout Cuba and the Isle of Pines.

[7] In rural Panama, the dessert prepared with the addition of sugar and flour, known as pesada de nance, is quite popular.

The fruits are also often used to prepare carbonated beverages, ice cream and juice; in Brazil, to flavor mezcal-based liqueurs, or make an oily, acidic, fermented beverage known as chicha, the standard term applied to assorted beer-like drinks made of fruits or maize.

In Veracruz, Mexico, it is called nanche and it is a common dessert element that can be found in the form of popsicles (percheronas) and ice sorbets (raspado).