genipap

Borrowed from Brazilian Portuguese jenipapo, from Old Tupi îanypaba. The Tupi meaning of the word is variously given as yandi-pawa or yandi-pab (“fruit for painting”),^[1] yandi-ibá-pab (“fruit of the extremities for painting”),^[2] and without citation or explanation, “breast of an old woman”.^[3]

genipap (plural genipaps)

1. The North and South American tree Genipa americana of the family Rubiaceae.
   • 2023, Nigel Smith, Amazon Fruits: An Ethnobotanical Journey, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 1109:

     Genipap is wild and cultivated in many parts of the Amazon, especially on floodplains, from the river's mouth to the Andean foothills in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.

2. The fruit of this tree, oval in shape, as a large as a small orange, of a pale greenish color, and with dark purple juice, traditionally used as a colorant.

   Synonym: genip

   • 2019, Luzia Valentina Modolo, Mary Ann Foglio, editors, Brazilian Medicinal Plants, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 190:

     Unripe genipap fruits are widely used by indigenous tribes to extract the blue pigment, exposing the inside part of the fruit to the air.

• Genipa americana on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• nippage