Carambola
Consuming large quantities of the fruit, especially for individuals with some types of kidney disease, can result in serious adverse health effects.
The center of diversity and the original range of Averrhoa carambola is tropical Southeast Asia, where it has been cultivated over centuries.
The showy fruits have a thin, waxy pericarp, orange-yellow skin, and crisp, yellow flesh with juice when ripe.
Each fruit can have 10 to 12 flat light brown seeds about 5–15 mm (1⁄4–1⁄2 in) in width and enclosed in gelatinous aril.
The most common cultivars grown commercially include the sweet types "Arkin" (Florida), "Yang Tao" (Taiwan), "Ma fueng" (Thailand), "Maha" (Malaysia), and "Demak" (Indonesia) and the sour types "Golden Star", "Newcomb", "Star King", and "Thayer" (all from Florida).
[1][7][8] Carambola is known by many names across its regions of cultivation, including khế in Vietnam, balimbing in the Philippines, belimbing in Indonesia and Malaysia, ma fen in China, kamaranga in India, and carambolo in Spanish-speaking countries.
Fruits picked while still slightly green will turn yellow in storage at room temperature, but will not increase in sugar content.
The taste is difficult to match, but it has been compared to a mix of apple, pear, grape, and citrus family fruits.
[1][8] Growth and leaf responses of container-grown 'Arkin' carambola (Averrhoa carambola L.) trees to long-term exposure of 25%, 50%, or 100% sunlight showed that shading increased rachis length and leaflet area, decreased leaflet thickness, and produced more horizontal branch orientation.
[7] Top producers of carambola in the world market include Australia, Guyana, India, Israel, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the United States.
[23] Due to concerns over pests and pathogens, however, whole star fruits cannot yet be imported to the US from Malaysia under current United States Department of Agriculture regulations.
In the United States, carambolas are grown in tropical and semitropical areas, including parts of Florida and Hawaii.
[1][25] In the United States, commercial cultivation and broad consumer acceptance of the fruit only date to the 1970s, attributable to Morris Arkin, a backyard horticulturalist, in Coral Gables, Florida.
[26] The trees are also grown as ornamentals for their abundant brightly colored and unusually shaped fruits, as well as for their attractive dark green leaves and their lavender to pink flowers.
[8] Like the bilimbi, the juice of the more acidic sour types can be used to clean rusty or tarnished metal (especially brass) as well as bleach rust stains from cloth.
[1] The farming video game Stardew Valley allows the player to cultivate and grow carambola,[27] in this setting known as "starfruit".
The in-game icon erroneously depicts the fruit as resembling its real-life cross-section, and the plant itself as a single-harvest crop instead of a tree.
