Last night, my father gave me some Pulasans (EN, BM), he said that they are the hybrid of rambutan and lychee.

I am not sure how true it is because the hybridization process is not mentioned in wikipedia, and it existed a long time ago. May be it is naturally hybridized hundreds or thousands of years ago which caused it appears in a shape in between rambutan and lychee.

Pulasan has dark red skin with soft torns (hair actually). It is more hairy than lychee, but less hairy than rambutan. The fruit and seed look more similar to rambutan than lychee.  The size is also bigger than lychee but about the same size compared to rambutan.   So my father called it lychee rambutan is more appropriate than rambutan lychee.  It also tastes sweeter than rambutan.

Nephelium mutabile is its scientific name. In Malay, buah means fruit, and pulasan means twisting. It is because this fruit is usually opened through the act of twisting the fruit with both hands in opposite directions (clockwise and counterclockwise), an action similar to wringing a wet cloth of water, thus the name pulasan.  It is called ngoh-khonsan in Thailand, and bulala in the Philippines.

The pulasan is native to Peninsular Malaysia.  We seldom see this fruit in the market or fruit stall here. And this is the first time I see pulasans.  SiewPeng said that she has heard about pulasan before but has never seen it before.  I did not know that it is called pulasan until I found it on Wikipedia when I was reading information about rambutan.