Editing Carambola (section)

==In popular culture==
[[File:Star fruit photo.jpg|right|thumb|Carambola, photo taken in Assam]]
The trees are also grown as ornamentals for their abundant brightly colored and unusually shaped fruits, as well as for their attractive dark green leaves and their lavender to pink flowers.<ref name="crane"/>

Like the bilimbi, the juice of the more acidic sour types can be used to clean [[rust]]y or [[tarnish]]ed metal (especially [[brass]]) as well as bleach rust stains from cloth. They may also be used as a [[mordant]] in [[dye]]ing.<ref name="jm"/>

The farming video game ''[[Stardew Valley]]'' allows the player to cultivate and grow carambola,<ref>{{Cite news | url=https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Starfruit | title=Starfruit | newspaper=Stardew Valley Wiki }}</ref> in this setting known as "starfruit". They are the most valuable crop in the game. The in-game icon erroneously depicts the fruit as resembling its real-life cross-section, and the plant itself as a single-harvest crop instead of a tree.

The Filipino word for the starfruit, ''balimbing'', due to its many-faced shape, has acquired the meaning in Philippine political discourse of a [[turncoat]], someone who switches political allegiances not out of principle but for their own self-interest.<ref>{{Cite web|author=Now You Know PH|title=ML@50: Martial Law Word of the Day — "Balimbing"|url=https://nowyouknowph.rappler.com/2022/09/16/ml50-martial-law-word-of-the-day-balimbing/|publisher=[[Rappler]]|access-date=2022-09-16|archive-date=2022-09-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220920170625/https://nowyouknowph.rappler.com/2022/09/16/ml50-martial-law-word-of-the-day-balimbing/|url-status=dead}}</ref>