Eugenia stipitata

Arazá is one of the most aromatic fruits of the Amazon: a single ripe yellow fruit perfumes a whole kitchen. Its pulp is thick, very juicy and very sour, with twice the vitamin C of an orange, and it makes some of the best juices and ice creams there are. It's a dense shrub or small tree, widely grown in Amazonian home gardens. Since the fruit bruises easily and ships badly, almost only the people who plant it know it.

A plant of the humid lowlands that grows up to about 650 meters with abundant rain; it tolerates a dry season of up to 2 months. It grows in full sun or light shade, in well-drained soil, ideally rich loam, though it tolerates poor, acid clay soils and brief flooding. It grows slowly to about 4.5 meters, densely branched, and starts bearing at 2–3 years.

The fruit, about 8 cm across, is used mainly in juices, jams, ice creams and sorbets; raw, it's too sour for most people. It loses its aroma quickly when cooked, so boil it briefly for jam.

In the Amazon some people eat the unripe fruit to expel intestinal worms, and the bark has little-documented medicinal uses.

A climax fruit tree of the medium stratum whose size and shape let it mix well with many tree crops; some plants are built much like cacao. Although slow-growing, it's a good species for rehabilitating exhausted soils.