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Plants & People: The Intersection of Botany and Human Experience

Pouteria lucuma, botanical illustration

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Pouteria lucuma: An exploration of historical and modern medical uses of the Andean lucuma fruit Pouteria lucuma is a fruit with an ever changing nomenclatural history. Though commonly known as lucuma, there are many regional names for this fruit. It is known as logma in the Bolívar region of Ecuador, lohma or louma in the Cotopaxi region of Ecuador, lucma or lucmo throughout Ecuador, lucumo in the Lima region of Peru, maco or rucma in Colombia, and mamón in Costa Rica (Pennington, 1990, pp. 381-385; Thulin et al., 2021). The current common name, lucuma, is a derivative of these indigenous names. First appearing in scientific literature as a genus, Lucuma fell within Icosandria Digynia according to the Linnean sexual system, as described by Juan Ignacio Molina’s “Saggio”. Since then, Lucuma has been used by multiple authors to describe a genus of Sapotaceae beyond the Andean region, including Asia, Australia, and Africa. This genus is currently synonymous with Pouteria, based on work published by T.D. Pennington (Thulin et al., 2021). The lucuma fruit, now known as Pouteria lucuma (Ruiz and Pavón) Kuntze was initially known as Lucuma bifera Molina, with other historic binomial names including Achras lucuma Ruiz and Pavón, Lucuma obovata Kunth, and Pouteria insignis Baehni (Pennington, 1990, pp. 381-385; Thulin et al., 2021).

Pouteria lucuma belongs to the family Sapotaceae within the order Ericales (Ericales, n.d.). The number of genera in the Sapotaceae family has fluctuated, from Aubréville’s historic 122 to Pennington’s current 53, all based on morphological characteristics (de Faria et al., 2017; Swenson & Anderberg, 2005). Because of Pennington's wide generic concepts, the genus Pouteria includes 304 species with pantropical distributions (Swenson & Anderberg, 2005). Phylogenetic reconstructions have demonstrated that Pouteria is polyphyletic, meaning that the type species from the New World should be placed in their own clade separate from other tropical Pouteria species (de Faria et al., 2017; Swenson & Anderberg, 2005; Thulin et al., 2021). This large genus shows homoplasy instead of synapomorphies, because of the previous reliance on morphological classifications instead of genetic analysis (de Faria et al., 2017; Swenson & Anderberg, 2005). New molecular evidence suggests that there is a strongly supported clade that includes P. lucuma that should be separated from Pouteria and reinstated under the genus Lucuma (Thulin et al., 2021).

Although the molecular phylogeny of P. lucuma specifically has not been published yet, there is morphological evidence of relation to Pouteria campechiana, a member of the former Lucuma genus, supported by geographical evidence (Pennington, 1990, pp. 381-385; Thulin et al., 2021). By looking at the phylogeny of P. campechiana, we can gain insight into P. lucuma’s evolutionary history (de Faria et al., 2017).

Lucuma grows on a subtropical fruit tree that originated in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes mountains (Duarte & Paull, 2015, pp. 117–123). Its current distribution is from Andean Colombian heading southward to Northern Chile, growing in wet montane and cloud forest, usually between a 1500 and 3000 m altitude, but can rarely be seen as low as 700 m (Pennington, 1990, pp. 381-385). The lucuma tree is most suited to sandy or sandy loam soils with high contents of organic matter and good drainage. It is able to moderately tolerate salinity and alkalinity, but the ideal pH is around 6.5-7.5. The tree is adapted to fairly dry conditions, but needs rainfall of about 800-1,000 mm per year to give higher yields. The ideal temperature for fruit production is between 18°C and 24°C, and the tree is killed by temperatures lower than -5°C. It is able to grow in full sunlight and flowers and fruits year-round in ideal conditions (Duarte & Paull, 2015, pp. 117–123).

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