Buah Lakum-Sarawak wild edible berry

A close up of the Lakum black berry

I asked a fruit seller what is this fruit which looks like green and black grapes.  He laughed and said this is the Unggu Sarawak or Sarawak grapes.  He grew this fruit himself in his garden.  "Unggu ini masam.  Kalau kamu makan buah ini, badan kamu akan gatal", he said, meaning "This fruit is sour.  If you eat it, your body will be itchy".
The fruit seller noticed I bought tuna fish.  He suggested I buy this Lakum fruit to cook asam fish.  In the past, he said the Lakum fruit was used to cook fish before asam paya was discovered.
This fruit is a cluster like a bunch of grapes.  The fruit is smaller than grapes.  It looks like cherry but the size of the fruit is the size of a berry.  I touched the ripe fruit which is the darker black colour and it was soft, tender and delicate.  It feels juicy.The lakum fruit is used as a bait to catch the baung fish.  It grows on a creeping vine.  In fact, this fruit is called cissus repens Lam, a wild edible berry of Borneo.  It is also known as the vitis diffusa Miq.
A unripe fruit is light green in colour.The berry is spherical concave in shape with length of 10-12 mm (which is shorter) and width of 13-17 mm.  There is a seed sometimes two seeds in a berry.  Lukam is from the genus vitis, meaning it came from the same category as the grapes except that its family is vitaceae.  In the jungle, it is found near streams.  It is described as a specie of tropical rainforest vine in the grape family. It was known as vitis triloba Roth, an outdated name, in the past.  Lakum or Lakom is an iban name for this fruit.  This fruit contains sucrose, glucose, fructose.  It has very low sugar content. It is one of a list of vitis grapes recommended for wine making.

Buah Lakum