Averrhoa carambola Arabian physician, astronomer and philosopher of the 12th century. Past synonyms include: The tree and fruits have many different names, Carambola is the Spanish vernacular name of the tree. In English it is called Star fruit, Carambola and Chinese gooseberry, in Malaysia and the Philippines it has numerous names. In Indonesia it is called "belimbing", in Tagalog it is called "balimbing". The related bilimbi is called "kamias" in Tagalog. "Averrhoa carambola" has a number of different forms differing in fruit taste, texture, and shape, some are very acidic and others are sweet. The plant is grown in Malaysia and Taiwan,
Gooseberry varieties from seed, their efforts having been chiefly directed to increasing the size of the fruit. Of the many hundred sorts enumerated in recent horticultural works, few perhaps equal in flavour some of the older denizens of the fruit-garden, such as the "Old Rough Red" and "Hairy Amber". The climate of the British Isles seems peculiarly adapted to bring the gooseberry to perfection, and it may be grown successfully even in the most northern parts of Scotland; indeed, the flavour of the fruit is said to improve with increasing latitude. In Norway even, the bush flourishes in gardens on the