Talk:Tamarind

Suggestion
Tamarind (Tamarindus indica) (from Arabic تمر هندي, romanized tamar hind, "Indian date") is a tree in the family Fabaceae. The genus Tamarindus is monotypic (having only a single species).

Origin
Someone list sources that indicate any "ancient importation" of tamarind into India from africa or stop plagiarising/editing. oh yeah also list some reputable sources that clearly state africa as an origin rather than india. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FEA8:DE0:2F98:3125:3777:75E5:243 (talk) 07:45, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

The origin of Tamarindus indica is controversial. Nevertheless, by looking at paleontological and anthropological study results, T. Indica is assumed to have an African origin. However, some scientists assume that the plant is originated from India, while others assume Madagascar.

T.indica is widely distributed in Africa and tropical Asia, as well as in South Africa and the Antilles, where it was recently introduced. It is also cultivated in Australia, Florida, Central and South America. In the Sahel, this is one of the most used trees.

Tamarind trees were introduced to Hawaii in 1797.

Ecology
T. indica grows on poor (nutrient deficient), limestone, alluvial and shale soils, as well as on fairly fertile loam. However, the growth can be perturbed when the tree grows on shallow soils. T. indica is able to resist drought and frequent flooding. The tree is moderately salt tolerant. It is also known to have a low water requirement, and therefore is widely planted in the dry zones of the tropics. The minimal temperature requires for the growth of T. indica is 20°C.

Plant
T. indica is a green or evergreen tree, characterized by a thick trunk. The tree is 20-30 meters high, with a diameter of 1.5-2 m. Crown diameter is 12 m.

Leaves
The leaves are alternate and even pinnate. They are 5-15 cm long, and are shortly petiolated.

Flowers
The flowers are arranged in few flowered racemes at the end of the branchlets. They are yellowish with red stripes, and are clustered by 5-10 together. Their length is 3-5 cm. The flowers are bisexual and zygomorphic. In general, the flowering stage takes place from December to January, but this can vary from country to country.

Fruits
Fruits are straight or curved pods that are 5-16 cm long. Pods are light grey to brown (color of the outer pericarp). Inside the pods is the pulp (blackish brown and thick), which contains the seeds. The color of the seeds is red or purple brown. There are 1-12 seeds per pod. After about 200 days, the fruit begins to dehydrate. The full ripeness is reached when 50% of the original water content has been lost.

Pulp
The pulp constitutes 30-50% of the ripe fruit. The dried pulp has a moisture content of 15-30%. The protein, fat and carbohydrate contents are respectively 2.9-10%, 0.5-3.1% and 56.7-82.6%. The fiber content is 2.2-18.3%. The pulp also contains tanning, about 600 mg per 100 g dried pulp.

Cultivation
Seeds may be planted in September, after being soaked 4-5 days in water. There are planted about 4 cm deep in baskets. When the seedlings are tall enough (60 to 70 cm), they are transplanted to groves. Except during prolonged droughts, the plant requires little attention. The trees grow in 4-5 years. Mature trees require no irrigation. Mature trees can produce 150-225 kg fruit. The pulp represents only 50% of the total fruit weight. On average, 80-90 kg of prepared pulp can be produced per mature tree. In some countries, it can reach up to 170 kg of prepared pulp per tree.

Tamarind tree has no serious problems with pests and diseases.

Usage
T. indica can be used for many purposes (source of fodder, timber, seeds and fruits,...), and is mainly cultivated for the pulp in the fruit (sweet/sour flavor).

Fruits are rich in vitamins B1, B2, B3, and provide small amounts of vitamin A and iron. They are also rich in the minerals (potassium, phosphorus,calcium and magnesium).

The pulp is used to prepare beverages, to flavor confections (curry, sauces or chutneys), to make syrups, jam or candy.

The leaves are cooked and eaten as vegetables (e.g. in curries). Otherwise, leaves are also eaten by cattle and goats. In india, they are used to feed silkworms. Seeds can also be used to feed animals.

Tamarind wood is used, because of its hardness and durability. It is considered to be a good fuelwood.

In addition to being edible, the pulp shows medicinal properties. It can be used as laxative or digestive. In Africa and Asia, tamarind trees are used for traditional medicine, because of the laxative and diuretic properties.

Old discussions
Could this stub be developed into a full article? Surely there is more to tamarinds than that? What genus does it belong to, what flowers, what fruit, what wood? Dieter Simon 21:18 30 May 2003 (UTC)

More to Tamarind - yes, as a food - what is it's nutritional composition? 81.151.95.24 21:35, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

What do people in Africa call tamarind? How/do they eat it too?172.144.186.41 16:19, 23 May 2006 (UTC)HelenBach


 * This page seriously needs to be cleaned up. It is tacky to include how a tamarind is called in every tongue on Earth.  The grammar is often incorrect and the sentence structure is a bit too simple at times.  I feel like I'm reading the Simple English Wikipedia. Davidleeroth 19:24, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

This is ridiculous: "Most spices have been proven to be beneficial for human consumption. The supposed ban was for the packaging, not the food content. Even so it is questionable as to the validity of these claims. Could it be possibly Tamarind is a health food not welcomed by those who stand to make money off of sick individuals? Tamarind candy has been eaten by Mexicans for years and they seem to be a thriving people." M414 04:34, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I removed a piece of badly written info and irrelevant info about one particular consignment rejected by the FDA. Shyamal 06:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Question
Why is tamarind sold (American supermarket) in bricks with the fruit pulp and the fibrous husks all crushed together?

My thought was that the bricks are boiled to extract the fruit, but wouldn’t make sense to do this commercially unless some of the medicinal properties are in the husks?

Surely the importers or growers must know.

I bought one just to experiment. Marerules 09:01, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

My family is Tamil, so we use tamarind (puli) a lot. We often use the bricks of dried tamarind pulp instead of the stuff straight from the shell or the paste. The bricks have seeds, the husk, pulp, and fiber, everything just mashed up to make them easier to use. It works in a similar way to the paste; no boiling is required. An amount of the dried stuff is soaked in warm water to extract tamarind juice, and when its completely extracted, you squeeze the remaining amount of water from the pulp and remove them from the extract. There you have it. The amount that you use depends on how sour you want the extract. Warm water optimizes the extraction. Hope this helps.htdmangoes1089 09:04, 2 July 2009

what use..
what use is the tamarind sauce addition with lamb shanks have to do with the artcle it should be in the food uses.--Spartan117009 23:19, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Amusingly, tamarind appeards to be a common base for "bad candy":

Not a Maldive native
Flora of Maldives page staes quite clearly that it is for plants growing as natives. This species is not native to the Maldives. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ethel Aardvark (talk • contribs).

Removal of the Trivia section
Someone removed the Trivia section, without telling us why. Have reverted this and reinstated the section. If you have a legitimate case for removing something you need to explain why you think it should be removed. Dieter Simon 01:21, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I thought this was me at first, then saw the date. I had never seen this page before today, but the trivia section was flagged so I attempted to integrate. When making the change, I thought I was logged in. In response to Dieter Simon, Wikipedia provides guidelines that discourage the existence of trivia sections, especially in instances when they are particular inappropriate. Trivia under a page in the category of pop culture - say, a popular film - is more acceptable, to my thinking, than trivia under a page in the category of FRUITS AND VEGETABLES, a more scientific and tangible topic. I integrated a legitimate piece of "trivia" - that the fruit is the iconic fruit of a city in the world - and essentially only removed a sentence that does not belong in this article anyway. That 'tamarindo' means cop in Mexico City belongs on a page of slang terms in Mexico, or a list of slang terms for police, etc. Not in an article on the fruit. For comparison, 'slab' is a slang term for auotmobile here in Houston (among other things) but this information is not relevant to the article "Automobile". Thus, if anyone reverts my edit, I will re-revert if they cannot argue the legitamacy of my change. I feel backed up by the Wikipedia guidelines and I believe any official WP ed might as well. GngstrMNKY (talk) 01:32, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Trivia means unimportant things. Readers should not be deprived of interesting related info shared by a user.teuqirbos 06:32, 1 April 2013 (UTC) 1 April 2013 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teuqirbos (talk • contribs)

WikiProject Food and drink Tagging
This article talk page was automatically added with WikiProject Food and drink banner as it falls under Category:Food or one of its subcategories. If you find this addition an error, Kindly undo the changes and update the inappropriate categories if needed. The bot was instructed to tagg these articles upon consenus from WikiProject Food and drink. You can find the related request for tagging here. If you have concerns, please inform on the project talk page -- TinucherianBot (talk) 11:29, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Edit warring
The anon that was edit warring at this page has been blocked for 24 hours. However, I would remind all editors, that when an article goes into dispute, it is a good idea to explain the controversy at the talkpage, rather than just battling it out in edit summaries. Thanks, Elonka 22:07, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Will do in the future. Visionholder (talk) 07:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

nutritional information
Could someone please add nutritional information to this article?

I just had some of those Thai tamarinds & they seemed *very* sweet indeed, so I suppose they have a lot of sugar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.167.114.189 (talk) 23:34, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Why the cleanup tag?
I fail to see why this article has been recently tagged as 'requiring cleanup'. If no justifications arise in 2 weeks, I'll remove the tag. Then, of course, it's likely there will be objections. --AVM (talk) 21:58, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I took the tag away. Now we'll see the objections.Openskye (talk) 21:29, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

"Drank" is not the past participle of "to drink"
"Drank" is not the past particple of "to drink", whatever dictionary.com say, "drunk" is. The sentence referred to "when drunk" is curtailed "when it is drunk", which is the correct p.p. All the dictionaries I have consulted, including Wiktionary say so. You have found the one non-standard usage dictionary.com have not detected. See for one. Dieter Simon (talk) 00:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It is in the Deep South. lol 98.194.39.86 (talk) 12:20, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
 * "Drank" in the Deep South is informal usage. In formal English, what is used in Wikipedia articles, "drank" shouldn't be used. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:03, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

The dimensions of a median-sized tamarind fruit
The article seems to lack this pertinent information. Warmest Regards, :)—thecurran Speak your mind my past 08:20, 7 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The pods vary greatly in size, from as small as 6 cm to larger than 15 cm. The inner soft edible part (which surrounds the seed) varies less in size, with the seed still in place, each one is usually about 2 cm across. But that is from my own experience in the West Indies; I do not have a source for that. Invertzoo (talk) 20:07, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Connection with "dates"
If Tamarind means "the date of the Hindustani's" then is there a connection with actual dates? Does anyone know? I always believed that Tamarind was made from dates until I read this article


 * No relation at all. The trees aren’t even in the same taxonomic order. Strebe (talk) 01:31, 1 May 2012 (UTC)


 * There are a few rather slight similarities: the edible part is soft and brown, delicious and at least partly sweet, and the tree grows wild in the right areas. Invertzoo (talk) 20:10, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

‘Native Tamarind in the Philippines’
Tamarind isn’t native to the Philippines. The word also shouldn’t be capitalized. There’s also no clear reason why the Philippines should be mentioned at all in that photo. I’m fixing this, in the absence of any theory for why the caption makes sense. Strebe (talk) 01:39, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Healthline
Healthline does not appear to satisfy MEDRS for. Opinions? IRWolfie- (talk) 21:42, 23 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree, but I suggest the more helpful action here would have been to track down the original source. Strebe (talk) 05:33, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Really, the same goes for all the stuff you deleted from that section. I’ve been poking around, and it turns out you can find all of that stuff in reliable sources. Just deleting things really isn’t constructive. Strebe (talk) 08:49, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Links to german version of this article is missing. Are there more missing?
The german version of this article has no link to the english one, and vice versa. Why? Can someone please add those links, I don't know how to do it. And one should also look for other language-versions of the article that aren't linked yet.--Qexilber (talk) 07:04, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
 * They seem to be in the sidebar of the article, already. Maybe there was a temporary communication error or something. Are you talking about this talk page, or the article? —PC-XT+ 00:10, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Female given name
don't know how this works. would like to submit Tamarind as a registered given female name, purely as a Wikipedia entry of vanity. www.findmypast.co.uk has a list of 54 records of births or baptisms for people with the given name, in Britain and a death registered in Dorset for Tamarind Jarvis 1814. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.26.239.34 (talk) 16:27, 3 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I think this would be considered WP:TRIVIA. Strebe (talk) 17:48, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Merge from Tamarind seed oil
There was a merge request at WP:PM. Procedurally tagging the articles for more input. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 21:26, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Odd table behavior, browser dependent
In the oil nutrition section, the text "bleached after refining." jumps from below its table to above the table named "Fatty acid composition of tamarind kernel oil". Initially noticed it on Firefox on Linux, behavior wasn't duplicated in Chrome on the same OS. Any ideas or is this a rendering bug?Wzrd1 (talk) 01:49, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
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Flatulence
Given that Tamarind is a legume, is it known to cause flatulence? If it does, it would be good to include this in the article. FreeFlow99 (talk) 16:56, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

What impact?
The article states: "The treatment of tamarind leaves on liver HepG2 cells significantly regulated the expression of genes and proteins involved with consequential impact on the coagulation system, cholesterol biosynthesis, xenobiotic metabolism signaling and antimicrobial response." It is not helpful to say that something "impacts" without indicating what the impact is. Can the impacts be included? FreeFlow99 (talk) 17:01, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Tamarind is unheard of in Europe (Italy)
In the southwest USA, Tamarind is found in Mexican owned fruit & vegetable stands & in Filipino markets but NO one in italy or the rest of Europe remotely use it. Why do they inventing such absurdities? That's like saying ribeye & borscht is the number 1 consumed food in India. 76.167.193.57 (talk) 06:58, 13 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Are you talking about something in the article? If so, what? Strebe (talk) 08:41, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Sweet versus Sour Tamarind
In the USA, sweet tamarind is typically found in East Asian (Oriental) markets while sour tamarind is typically found in Latin American markets. Likewise, we find East Asian culinary recipes requiring sweet tamarind and Latin American culinary recipes requiring sour tamarind. Hence, we have a clear distinction between sweet and sour tamarind in these two cultures and I think, for most readers, this distinction is likely to be clarifying and helpful if reflected across all sections of this article. Rtdrury (talk) 02:24, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Is the Nutrition Section supposed to be devoid of text or is that normal?
I don't know if the box on the right is supposed to be the nutrition section or if someone made a mistake. 187.252.49.92 (talk) 06:38, 15 June 2023 (UTC)