Durio Lowianus

From the outside, Durio lowianus is at a glance indistinguishable from normal durians. What’s noticeable is its deep green exterior. It has long pointy spikes, and is about the same size as durians seen for sale all over Malaysia. What differentiates it enough to be its own species is that the flowers are pink, instead of white and the spines are conical instead of pyramidal. Getting down to the nit picky details,

Not having tasted Durio lowianus myself for sure (although I’m pretty certain we ate it in Jerantut), I am going off reports from a variety of sources. It’s a bit of a futile exercise, as there’s almost no documentation of what the fruit actually tastes like. Botanists get so excited running around with their measuring tapes that they apparently forget about finding out whether or not their subject would do well on the dinner table.

That said, from what I’ve ascertained Durio lowianus tastes a lot like a kampung durian. The aril runs the gamut from a nice yellow color to a dull white, thick and pretty firm like the texture of a dense cake. The flavor is totally durian, but stronger and the odor more pungent. I think I would like this durian.

The only solution to finding out what this durian really tastes like is to go back and find it myself this summer.  Wish me luck.

Peninsular Malaysia, Southern Thailand, and Sumatra. It follows patterns of other durians in the region.

When Rob and I were wandering around Taman Negara looking for durians, we were told about Durian Daun, which means “leaf durian” because the fruit is green on the outside. At the time we had no idea the name referred to an entirely different species.

Sources list two other local names used in Malaysia, and one in Southern Thailand:  durian sepeh (Terrenganu), durian au (Kelantan), Thurian-don (Thailand)

Durio lowianus was named by an Italian priest-botanist who had the bad luck of dying before he could publish his findings.

Benedetto Scortechini was born in the Papal States (that sounds like a joke but it’s not) and was one of the priests brought to Australia around 1870. His intense interest in botany put him in contact with a lot of other botanists in the Pacific, and he was eventually invited to come to Malaysia to collect plant specimens for three years. In 1886, having finished with his collections, he set out for Calcutta to publish his findings at the Botanical Garden there. Unfortunately he had already contracted some kind of jungle fever, probably malaria, and he died shortly after his arrival in Calcutta. Bummer.

Photo from the database of the Biodiversity Clearing House

The priest’s premature death meant that forever after he would have to share the credit of naming the fruit with Sir George King. Around the same time, King was the director of the Botanical Garden in Calcutta. His lofty position enabled him to pay people to send him specimens from all over the world.  In 1891 he published his description of a durian from Perak under the name durio wrayi.

The species lived with the two names for more than 60 years, when finally AJ Kosterman decided that durio wrayi and durio lowianus were really one and the same fruit. He chose to discard wrayi, maybe out of a sense of fairness to the Italian priest, or because lowianus honors one of the most influential (in a good way) governors of Malaysia. 

A lot of research has been done on using Durio lowianus as rootstock for commercial durian orchards because it appears to be resistant to fungal infections, particularly Phytophthora palmivora. Studies by MARDI suggest that while Phytophthora infection averages about 50% in clones grafted on susceptible rootstock, it is reduced to only 7.5% using Durio lowianus as rootstock.

Popular durian clones grafted onto Durio lowianus rootstock are available at MARDI’s Planting Material Seed and Live Stock Breed Production Unit 

The tree is large, growing to 55 meters in height. It prefers the lowlands up to 150 meters elevation, which is quite low. Most durian species tolerate up to 800 meters in elevation. A study in 1977 reports a seed germination rate of 100% in 21 days.