368 BOTANY. 



MON.ECIA. MONANDRIA. 



Artocarpus incisa. The Bread-fruit Tree. European 

 botanists recognise but one species of bread-fruit tree, 

 notwithstanding that the Tahitians have distinct names 

 for more than twenty-four different kinds or varieties. It 

 is, without exception, the most ornamental of Polynesian 

 plants, and is one which tends equally to characterize 

 and adorn a Tahitian landscape. Its average height is 

 about fifteen or twenty feet ; although some examples 

 are distinguished by a more stately stature, and by a 

 peculiar whiteness of their bark. The leaves are large, 

 rigid, somewhat scabrous, deeply and uniformly incised, 

 and of a dark- green colour, bearing a general resem- 

 blance to the foliage of the common fig-tree. The 

 male and female flowers are borne distinct on the same 

 tree (Monoecious). The male fructification is a long 

 cylindrical spadix, of bright-yellow colour, and covered 

 with minute sessile flowers, which have no petals ; when 

 its function is performed, it turns brown and falls from 

 the branch. The female fructification is a green ovate 

 spadix, covered with prominent hexagonal germens, each 

 of which is surmounted by a single small stigma ; the 

 germen and stigma constitute an entire flower, since 

 neither corolla nor style of the pistil are ever present. 

 The complete female spadix bears a miniature resem- 

 blance to the perfect fruit : the latter being, in fact, but 

 an enlargement of the former. The edible fruit hangs 

 to the branch by a short stalk, scattered with long 

 silvery hairs ; it is globular,* about the size of a melon, 

 and marked on its surface with raised hexagonal figures, 

 which give it an elegantly-reticulated appearance. 



* One variety of this fruit, called by the Taliitians paea, ha an oval 

 form, and is rather larger than the ordinary kind. 



