BREADFRUIT AND THE
BOUNTY
Breadfruit, ulu (Artocarpus altilis)
MORACEAE, Mulberry
Family
The breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) is an easily recognized tree (8-18 m tall) with large, dark green leathery
leaves and milky latex. It is now found throughout the lowland tropical areas
of the world, but is probably a native of the East Indies. Its fruit is a
large, spherical to oblong fleshy organ (up to 30 cm in diameter), which is
actually a multiple fruit or "sorosis," formed from a female
inflorescence having hundreds of small flowers. Breadfruit is monoecious. Normally, people do
not think about breadfruit for purposes of construction, but wood of the
breadfruit tree also has been used to make surfboards, hula drums, and specific
parts of ocean-going canoes, and its inner bark (phloem) has been made into
tapa cloth.
A green, unripe breadfruit, which weighs several kilograms, contains
30-40% starch and is rich in vitamin B. As breadfruit becomes ripe, starch is
converted into sugar, and the fruit then also becomes rich in vitamin C. The
green (unripe), starchy multiple fruit can be eaten baked, boiled, or fried
after milky sap is bled off and the fruit is peeled and cored, and the edible
flesh resembles that of a potato in taste and consistency. In most cases, this
starchy food is used as a substitute for taro (Colocasia esculenta) or sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas). Ripe breadfruit may be incorporated into
dishes that need sweet fruits, including dessert pies, cakes, and sauces. Thus,
breadfruit is a very important part of native diets in the Pacific Basin. In
New Guinea and Melanesia, the seeded form, called breadnut, is the source of
seeds that are roasted or boiled, and tastes like a chestnut (Castanea). However, in most other regions, especially
Polynesia and Micronesia, the flesh of seedless forms (aborted ovules) is the
principal food.
When Captain Cook
visited Tahiti in 1769, he and his crew were introduced to this fruit. Joseph
Banks and his botanist on that voyage, Solander, raved about this plant after
returning to England, and some nobility saw this as a plant with great
potential in the British West Indies, where it could be used to feed the slaves
who worked the sugar cane fields. Sir Joseph Banks urged King George III of
England to introduce breadfruit to the West Indies, and in 1787 the King
dispatched Captain William Bligh on the H.M.S. Bounty to accomplish that goal.
The Bounty reached Tahiti in 1788, and the crew spent six months there
collecting and propagating plants for shipment. During their prolonged stay,
the crew members married Tahitian girls, and they were understandably upset
when they were forced to sail for the West Indies. After leaving Tahiti on
April 4, 1789, with 1015 breadfruit plants, Captain Bligh was overpowered in a
mutiny, and as a result he and 18 others were cast adrift in a longboat. No one
expected the outcasts to survive, but they landed 41 days later on Timor, a
Dutch island 5000 kilometers to the west without losing a single member.
Meanwhile, the mutineers, led by officer Fletcher Christian, retrieved their
wives on Tahiti and then settled on the desolate Pitcairn Island, where they
attempted to set up a utopian society, which soon failed. (A descendent of that
mutiny crew still lives on Pitcairn Island.) A subsequent and successful
breadfruit expedition was carried out by the British Admiralty later in that
century (1791-1793). However, after breadfruit finally made it to Kingstown,
Jamaica and St. Vincent, the black slaves refused to eat breadfruit.
One seldom appreciated
fact about breadfruit is that the latex is extremely sticky. Latex of
breadfruit therefore has been used as a glue of objects and formerly was
smeared on branches to entrap birds, whose feet and feathers get stuck, to
capture food and gather their prized feathers. Utensils will become clogged if
the latex is still liquid. The solidified latex was used as chewing gum. Liquid
latex produces the sheen on tapa cloth. It is also said that to avoid staining
hands with this latex, the person should coat the skin with cooking oil, and
avoid getting milky sap on clothes, from which it will permanently stain.
A close cousin of the
breadfruit is the jackfruit, Artocarpus heterophyllus, which is very sweet and strongly acidic.
Experts believe that this species is native to India, where the plant is
heavily cultivated, but this fruit is particularly popular in very poor
tropical areas, such as Brazil and in the East Indies. There is currently much
interest in using this plant for many different purposes.
