Update, 18 Aug. 2011: Someone from the Breadfruit Institute kindly left a comment below, suggesting that this tree might possibly be a breadnut rather than a breadfruit tree. I’ll update this post further as the fruit matures, but for now we should leave the identification open. I’ll call it an Artocarpus sp. until the species name is verified.
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Our breadfruit tree is now five years old. I first saw this flower, inflorescence actually, two weeks ago. It is a female. The pale, yellowish structure to the right of the inflorescence is a stipule pair. The stipules will eventually fall off, leaving a scar – a horizontal line between leaves – that is typical of the family. In breadfruits this scar encircles the stem.
Breadfruit trees have male and female flowers on the same tree. This morning I spotted a male catkin even though typically the male flower appears first.
There may be 1500 or so tiny flowers in the female inflorescence. Zooming in, you can see the pistils pretty clearly and if you look at the outline against the green leaf, you can see some of the branched stigmas (the part that receives the pollen).
You can also see a few white drops of latex exuding from some of the pistils. This latex, like the stipule scar, is a characteristic of the Moraceae family, which includes the rubber plant, figs, mulberries, and the osage orange.
The pistils are attached to a spongy core and will eventually fuse together, forming the fruit, which is an aggregate like pineapple. Breadfruits are not native to Panama but are cultivated now throughout the tropics, despite the famous Mutiny on the Bounty.
Related articles
- Taking Breadfruit From the Lab in to the Field (timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com)
Great breadfruit flower pictures! Maybe you’ll let me use them for my economic botany class? Oh, and Captain Bligh was successful! He got a new ship, returned to Tahiti, got the breadfruit and transported it to the Caribbean area, although it was never enthusiastically adopted as a food plant.
I’ll gladly let you use the pictures for your class, Phyto. You can download the originals from Flickr.
Determined fellow, that Bligh. I stopped the story a little abruptly, I suppose. So now your comment has completed it.
Hi Mary,
Nice writeup and lovely photographs. The fruit and leaves on your tree look more like breadnut, Artocarpus camansi, a closely related species native to New Guinea, and ancestor to breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis). If your fruit stays spiny as it matures, and is full of large seeds, that look like chestnuts, it is definitely breadnut. The seeds are quite tasty and can be boiled or roasted. This species was collected in the Philippines by the French and spread throughout the Caribbean and other tropical regions, in parallel with the distribution of the seedless breadfruit from Tahiti by Bligh.
Thank you, Breadfruit Institute!
The tree was sold to us as breadfruit when we were new to Panama, and I never thought about checking out its identification. Well, well. It certainly bears watching.
A thought – is there any difference between the two species in the color of the stipules when they drop off? The ones from this tree are reddish just before they drop off (here) and when they reach the ground, as here and here.
I certainly appreciate your taking the time to comment on my post.
Mary
Mary,
The stipules on both species look the same. See our website (http://www.breadfruit.org) for more information about breadfruit (and breadnut).
You can also download profiles for both species at: http://www.agroforestry.net/tti/index.html#Anchor-Preview-49575
Okay – thanks! I’ll start studying. I do truly appreciate your comments. They’re quite helpful. ~ Mary
Wonderful green photos! I’m interested to hear it’s in the same family as Osage Orange. I took some photos of that yesterday.
Hi Anne,
Those osage oranges – we called them hedgeapples when I was growing up – are really something, aren’t they? It tickled me when I learned that they were in the same family as breadfruit. When I think about the fruits, though, it makes perfect sense. The one thing I’d do today if I came upon an osage orange tree or shrub is look for the stipules and the stipule scars. Fascinating feature, I think. Are you going to post your photos?
Great photos and an informative post. I too find it interesting that breadfruit and hedge apples are related. From a human prospective, hedge apples have no known uses other than as projectiles.
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