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Food|The Pong-Pong Fruit in ‘White Lotus’ Really Is That Dangerous
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/dining/white-lotus-pong-pong-fruit-suicide-tree.html
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Indigenous to parts of South and Southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific islands, the fruit contains a toxin in its seeds that attacks the heart.
April 7, 2025Updated 9:02 p.m. ET
This article contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of “The White Lotus.”
After the season finale of “The White Lotus,” viewers may never look at a piña colada the same way again.
The long-teased murder-suicide fantasies of Timothy Ratliff (played by Jason Isaacs) come into sharp focus during the episode, as his family faces an uncertain future. He decides to poison them with the seeds of the pong-pong tree’s fruit rather than face their disappointment over losing their fortune.
A hotel worker at the luxury Thai resort has already warned Ratliff of the tree’s toxicity. By the season finale, the same worker inadvertently gives him instructions on how to extract poison from the seeds of what locals call the “suicide tree.”
But what’s the real story behind the pong-pong?
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What is pong-pong fruit?
Pong-pong trees, or Cerbera odollam, are indigenous to South and Southeast Asia, tropical Pacific islands and parts of Australia, according to the National Tropical Botanical Garden, a research garden in Hawaii.
The fruit is two to four inches in length and turns from green to red as it ripens. Ty Matejowsky, the chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Central Florida who specializes in cultural anthropology and food studies, said the fruit’s cardiotoxin is concentrated in the seeds’ kernels, “almost like a peach pit.”
