''Ficus pumila'' var. ''awkeotsang'' is a member of the

fig The fig is the edible fruit of ''Ficus carica'', a species of small tree in the flowering plant family Moraceae. Native to the Mediterranean and western Asia, it has been cultivated since ancient times and is now widely grown throughout the world ...

family and a variety of '' Ficus pumila''. The plant is sometimes grown near

betel nut The betel (''Piper betle'') is a vine of the family Piperaceae, which includes pepper and kava. The betel plant is native to Southeast Asia. It is an evergreen, dioecious perennial, with glossy heart-shaped leaves and white catkins. Betel pla ...

palms thus providing a tall trunk, which the fig uses as a support to climb.

Use

The main use of this plant is its fruit seed, which is harvested to make

aiyu jelly Aiyu jelly (; or ; or simply ), known in Amoy Hokkien as ''ogio'' (), and as ice jelly in Singapore (), is a jelly made from the gel from the seeds of the awkeotsang creeping fig found in Taiwan and East Asian countries of the same climates an ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...

(known as ''ice jelly'' in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

). The jelly, when combined with

sweeteners A sugar substitute is a food additive that provides a sweetness like that of sugar while containing significantly less food energy than sugar-based sweeteners, making it a zero-calorie () or low-calorie sweetener. Artificial sweeteners may be d ...

and

lemon The lemon (''Citrus limon'') is a species of small evergreen trees in the flowering plant family Rutaceae, native to Asia, primarily Northeast India (Assam), Northern Myanmar or China. The tree's ellipsoidal yellow fruit is used for culin ...

or lime juice is a favorite snack in

ese

night market Night markets or night bazaars are street markets which operate at night and are generally dedicated to more leisurely strolling, shopping, and eating than more businesslike day markets. They are typically open-air markets popular in East Asia, So ...

s, Taiwanese

farmers' market A farmers' market (or farmers market according to the AP stylebook, also farmer's market in the Cambridge Dictionary) is a physical retail marketplace intended to sell foods directly by farmers to consumers. Farmers' markets may be indoors or o ...

s and Singapore

hawker centre A hawker centre or cooked food centre is an open-air complex commonly found in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. They were built to provide a more sanitary alternative to mobile hawker carts and contain many stalls that sell different variet ...

References

pumila var. awkeotsang Endemic flora of Taiwan {{Fruit-stub

Use

See also

References