Averrhoa carambola both have edible fruit; the other species "Averrhoa bilimbi", which is sometimes called the Bilimbi or the Cucumber Tree, is limited to tropical regions. The fruits of "A. bilimbi" are too sour to be eaten raw, while the sweet forms "A. carambola" are eaten raw. The fruits of "A. bilimbi" and the sour forms, which have high oxalic acid content, of "A. carambola" are pickled and made into jelly, jam, and juice. The genus was named after Abū 'l-Walīd Muḥammad bin Aḥmad bin Rushd (better known just as Ibn Rushd), who was called Averroes in European literature - a famous
Common name not always English. For example, "Dikkop" is the centuries-old South African vernacular name for their two local species: "Burhinus capensis" is the Cape dikkop (or "gewone dikkop", not to mention the presumably much older Zulu name "umBangaqhwa"); "Burhinus vermiculatus" is the "water dikkop". The thick joints in question are not even, in fact, the birds’ knees, but the intertarsal joints—in lay terms the ankles. Furthermore, not all species in the genus have “thick knees”, so the thickness of the "knees" of some species is not of clearly descriptive significance. The family Burhinidae has members that have various common names even