from the liquid. Boiling and drying S. purpurea fruits will preserve them for several months. Unripe fruits can be eaten, though they are much more tart and somewhat bitter. They are made into a tart sauce or pickled in vinegar or lime juice and eaten with chile peppers and salt. The ripe fruit is commonly sold in the streets in most Central American countries in plastic bags; also available are red hot pepper sauce and "alhuaishte" (very fine ground toasted pumpkin seeds). In Costa Rica it is customary to eat the ripe fruit with salt. A typical jocote dish in Salvadoran cuisine consists of a syrup made of panela (a molasses made from artisan sugar blocks made by boiling cane juice from a molienda [cane crushing station traditionally ran by oxen or currently with portable gas engines], to evaporate water until it achieves thick molasses consistency, then poured into wood molds and let it cool down. Once solidified later are wrapped in dry corn husk leaves called "tuzas" and sold in the markets. This can be found only during the harvest season, from around Semana Santa (Easter) to the end of August. In Panama and Coastal Ecuador the tree is used throughout the countryside as a living fence and can be propagated by planting trunks. References External links Purple mombin purpurea Trees of Mexico Trees of South America Crops originating from Mexico Tropical fruit Natural history of Mesoamerica