Breadfruit Tree

Breadfruit Tree

 

Family : Moraceae

Characteristic Features : 

Habit : Evergreen trees to 25 m high.

Stem : bark 10-12 mm thick, blackish-grey, mottled with green and black, exfoliating in large thick flakes, exfoliated surface orange-red; blaze pinkish-yellow; exudation milky white latex; trunk with warty tubercles; branchlets glabrous.

Leaves : simple, alternate; stipules 3-5 cm long, lateral, ovate-lanceolate, sheathing, glabrous, cauducous; petiole 20-40 mm long, stout, grooved above, glabrous; lamina 8-23 x 3-13 cm, obovate, obovate-oblong, or elliptic-ovate, base acute, round or cuneate, apex acute or obtuse, margin entire, glabrous and shining above and scabrous beneath; lateral nerves 6-8 pairs, pinnate, prominent, arched, intercostae scalariform, prominent.

Flowers : unisexual, minute, yellowish-green, in spikes enclosed by spathe-like bracts, male from young branches, catkin narrow-cylindric; perianth 2-lobed, puberulous; stamen 1; filament somewhat flattened, stout; anthers ovate-oblong; female catkins from the trunk and mature branches, more massive, perianth with strongly projecting conical apex; ovary 0.3 mm, superior, globose-obovoid; style exserted; stigma spathulate.

Fruit : a sorosis 30-45 x 20-25 cm, oblong, tuberculate, tubercles conical yellowish-green, fruiting perianth yellow to light orange, fleshy.

seeds : 10-12 x 8-10 mm, elliptic-oblong, smooth, glossy

Significance:

• Test tube plant, developed by Dr. Kavitha Kulkarni from Dr Küpper's Biotech Unit Laboratory of Applied Biology