The mystery fruit..

When I went to pick up my children from school, I came across two women of South East Asian descent (possibly from the Philippines). One woman was using a long pole to pound the branches of a tree repetitively so that the ripe fruits would give way and fall to the ground, and another had a black refuse bag to collect them. I crossed the street to them as it was the route I normally take to the school. I gestured to them and asked "Is the fruit edible to eat?" "Yes" she replied and added something that I did not quite hear as I was walking away from them in the direction of the school. Hmm.. Edible fruits. I wonder what they are? The neighbourhood street is dotted with trees which I can recall seeing back in M'sia, of which one tree had long outreached branches with fern like leaves, vibrant red flowers and huge black pods.
Anyway, I came across a similar leafless tree that looked like it was hit with a long pole by the same women earlier on! Though the pods were dangling from its branches in abundance, they were not within easy reach. I picked one of the bean pods that had fallen to the ground and broke the crumbly brown exterior shell apart. Inside was a guey brown substance. The consistency reminded me of tamarind or asam jawa as the Malays call it. (I am not sure what the people in Java would call tamarind but definitely not asam jawa). It tastes soury sweet and is usually used in South East Asian cuisine. Malaysians used them a lot for asam pedas (usually fish in chilli flavoured soup) or in fish curry or laksa. Any dish with fish in it will taste better with tamarinds added. I never really got to taste dishes with tamarinds from the Philippines. However, I do recall going to dinner to a restaurant called Tamarind Springs in KL and which specialises in Indochinese cuisines (think Laos, Khmer and Vietnam) and they presumably used a lot of tamarind as the food was not spicy hot by KL standard.
When I came back home, I had to investigate and check in the wild plant book that I recently purchased last weekend. There I found some facts about native tamarind trees but the the description and pics of the fruits/flowers do not really resemble the pods in the backstreet. Maybe it was another variety or the pics were photographed earlier in the season. My deduction was inconclusive at that point but in the evening, I came across a tamarind wrapper I brought from KL and it had a picture of a bunch of tamarind pods. They looked identicle to the pods on the tree in the street . Thereon, I can safely deduce that they were indeed from a native type of tamarind tree. Well, what da ya know, one of my favourite cooking ingredients is actually growing on the trees along my ally. I better find a nice stick to poke the ripe tamarind pods on the branches so they will fall and then gather them up for my cooking pot!
*Update - I brought some of them home and showed dh and he confirmed that they were tamarinds. He was a bit puzzled by my question and asked me haven't I seen a tamarind tree before??? That's what I would like to know ie whether he has seen one across the street from us.