Resource Book on Kokum (Garcinia indica Choisy)

Kokum (Garcinia indica Choisy) is one of the native underexploited tree spice. It is
mostly found in Konkan region of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Surat district of
Gujarat on the West Coast of India and to some extent in the forests of Assam, Meghalaya,
West Bengal. In spite of its incredible medicinal and nutritive properties, kokum is
generally not cultivated systematically on orchard scale like that of mango, cashew nut etc.
It is mostly found as a kitchen garden plant or mixed crop in plantations of coconut, areca
nut, as roadside plants or in forest.
The common names for Kokum are Goa butter tree, Kokum butter tree, mangosteen
oil tree. In Hindi it is known as Kokum while in Marathi it is variously known as bheranda
bhiranda, kokamba, kokambi, ratamba, ratambi, tambada amba. In Tamil it is known as
murgal, murgal-mara and in Malayalam it is kaattampi kokkam in Kannada it is called
murgina, punarpuli, devana huli. In Oriya it is tintali and in Gujarati and Konkani it is Kokam
or bhirind. In Sanskrit it is variously known as vrikshamia, amlabija, amlapura, amlashaka.
In French, Italian and Spanish the name is spelt as cocum and in Portuguese it is known as
brindao or brindonna.