S. lasiocarpum is found wild in parts of temperate and tropical Asia: the Andaman Islands, Sri Lanka, Indochina, south China, Taiwan, much of Malesia, Papuasia and Queensland, Australia.

It's cultivated in tropical Asia, used in food additives for flavoring, and given to the sick as a folk medicine.

In Thailand, a special kind of sauce called nam prek is made with the fruit.

[5] In Tonga, where the fruit known as the touloku was used similarly to the tomato and as such was displaced when the introduced latter became more popular.

When grown outside of their native range, all four of those plants will readily hybridize, producing sterile offspring.