Tamarindus Indica : an Overview

INTRODUCTION History Tamarind is a leguminous trees of genus Tamarindus a monotype taxon with only specie indicum. Tamarindus is medieval latinization of the Arabic name for the fruit, meaning Indian date. The fruits of the tamarind were traded widely in ancient times. Records from the eastern Mediterranean show Tamarindus indica was already in cultivation there in the fourth century B.C. On encountering the fruit in western India, Arab sea-traders thought the sticky black pulp and seeds of the fruit resembled their native date palm, so they combined their common name for date palm ‘Tamr’, along with the Arabic name for India (‘hindi’), to arrive at the common name tamrhindi on which the scientific name Tamarindus is based. The Arab introduced it into Europe.