190 



KNOWLEDGE 



[August 1, 1890. 



THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE AND THE NETTLE 

 FAMILY. 



r>Y K. Camper Day, B.A.Oxon. 



TIIK first (Inscription of the bread-fruit was given in 

 Kiss by Dampier. He declared its flavour to be 

 intermediate between those of bread and roast 

 chestnuts. "The inside," he said, "is soft, 

 tender, and white, like the crumb of a penny loaf. 

 There is neither seed nor stone in the inside, but all of a 

 pnre substance like bread." About a hundred years later. 

 Captain Cook described the plant more accurately. " The 

 tree that bears the bread-fruit is about the size of a horse- 

 chestnut ; its leaves are near a foot and a half long, in 

 shape oblong, resembling in almost every respect those of 

 the fig-tree ; its fruit is not unlike the Cantaloupe melon 

 either in size or shape ; it is enclosed in a thin skin, and 

 its core is as large as a person's thumb ; it is somewhat of 

 the consistency of new bread, and as white as blanched 

 almond ; it divides into parts and they roast it before it is 

 eaten ; it has little or no taste." Everybody knows how 

 much interest was aroused in this country by Captain 

 Cook's praises of the bread-fruit, and how the Boiintij was 

 sent out for the purpose of transplanting a number of 

 specimens to the West Indies, where it was supposed 

 (wrongly, as the event proved) that the newly-discovered 

 vegetable would supersede the banana as the staple food 

 of the natives. The transplantation was successful 

 enough, but it was soon found that the bread-fruit could 

 not comijete with the banana in rapidity of growth, and in 

 the production of a maximum quantity of food with a 

 minimum of labour. The bread-fruit, however, has im- 

 doubtedly better qualities as a food. It has, according 

 to Mr. A. E. Wallace, " a slight and delicate but very 

 chai-acteristic flavour, which, like that of good bread and 

 potatoes, one never gets tired of." In some kinds there 

 are large seeds, which ripen ; but in those commonly used 

 for food (and the bread-fruit forms the chief food of the 

 South Sea Islanders) the seeds are aborted, and the whole 

 fruit can be eaten. 



The general appearance of the bread-fruit when nearly 

 ripe is well shown in one of the photographs which accom- 

 pany this article. The larger of the two fruits is about 

 eight inches long. The colour is a light green, changing 

 to yellow at maturity. 



Although the size of the fruit and the close resemblance 

 between the edible portion and ordinary bread are the 

 points that have appealed to the popiUar imagination, the 

 bread-fruit tree is not without other remarkable charac- 

 teristics, which are not so generally known. In the first 

 place it is a member of the very interesting family to 

 which our nettles belong. At first sight, nothing would 

 seem more dissimilar than the bread-fruit, as shown in the 

 photograph, and our common stinging nettle ; not to men- 

 tion other points of difference, the leaves of the former are 

 large, smooth, and leathery, while those of the latter are 

 small, and densely covered with down and stinging hairs. 

 The chief resemblance is in the flowers. All the nettle 

 tribe have separate male and female flowers ; in some cases 

 both are to be found on the same plant ; in others, as with 

 our commonest kind of nettle, an individual plant bears 

 male or female flowers exclusively. On the bread-fiuit 

 tree the male flowers are clustered in large catkms, 

 roughly resembling the heads of bulrushes ; "the female 

 flowers are clustered upon small round balls, which after- 

 wards expand and become the .bread-fruit. Of the three 

 kinds of nettles in Great Britain, the rarest has several 

 peculiarities which remind one of the bread-fruit. It is 

 monoecious, that is, both male and female flowers are foimd 



on the same specimen ; and the female flowers are clustered 

 together into little round balls which have earned for 

 the species the distinctive name of "pill-bearing" 

 {inluliferii). 



The English representatives of the family are very few. 

 Besides the three kinds of stinging nettles above men- 

 tioned, there are the common pellitory and the hop. and 

 these exhaust the list, unless we mclude the elm, which 

 is closely allied. But the tropical species are very nume- 

 rous. Among these may be reckoned the hemp, which, 

 although cultivated in England, is not a native ; the mul- 

 berry ; the banyan, remarkable for the adventitious roots 

 thrown down from the boughs, by means of which its 

 crown can be indefinitely extended ; and the slow-growing 

 caoutchouc plant, so much used for decorative purposes. 

 Perhaps the two members of the family which, for ditt'erent 

 reasons, have acquired the greatest celebrity are the 

 peepul and the wpas. The former is the sacred tree of 

 the Buddhists and Hindoos. The venerable specimen 

 sho\\"n in our second j)hotograph is the Sacred I5o Tree of 

 Anburadhpur, Ceylon. It is probably the oldest existing 

 tree of which the date of planting is recorded. Taken as 

 a cutting from the tree in which Buddha himself was 

 supposed to have been cradled, it was planted in the year 

 288 B.C. It is now in a somewhat decrepit condition, as 

 shown by the props supporting the branches ; but no one 

 is allowed to injure it, and only the leaves which fall 

 naturally are distributed to pilgrims. The upas tree of 

 ■lava, on the other hand, enjoyed for some time a notoriety 

 of a most unenviable kind. About a himdred years ago a 

 traveller fi'om -lava published in the LnniUm Mniju^ine a 

 very exaggerated accoimt of the tree. He declared that 

 the vapour given ofl' by it was so poisonous as to destroy 

 almost all living things within a radius of fifteen miles. 

 Condemned malefactors, he said, were sent to fetch the 

 poison, and not more than two in every twenty returned 

 alive. The upas did not deserve the evil reputation 

 which it acquired in consequence of this description. 

 As a matter of fact, the tree grows in thick forests, and, 

 although it secretes a deadly poison (strychnia), it does 

 no harm to living things near it imless they actually rub 

 against it ; and even then it merely causes an irritation of 

 the skin. 



But the fact that the upas secretes poison is undoubted, 

 and indeed the secretion of fluid matter, poisonous or 

 otherwise, is characteristic of the whole nettle family. 

 The stinging hairs of the common nettle, and the bitter 

 gum-resin of the hop, as used in brewing, are well known 

 to everybody. Three difl'erent kinds of poisonous material 

 are extracted from hemp. They are known as bhang, 

 ganjah, and churras, and all of them are smoked in India 

 in much the same manner as opium. But there is another 

 and more harmless kind of secretion miiversally charac- 

 teristic of the nettle family. If you cut oft" the top of a 

 common nettle a white milk-like liquid immediately begins 

 to exude fi-om the wounded end of the stem. It consists 

 of a watery fluid, with exceedingly small granules sus- 

 pended in it, which, as in the ease of cow's milk, are the 

 cause of its opaque appearance. When the fluid exudes 

 and comes into contact with the air the corpuscles have a 

 tendency to stick together and harden into a gummy sub- 

 stance. In every member of the nettle family this fluid 

 is to be found. The cow-tree, a native of \'enezuela, 

 yields from incisions in the trunk a particularly copious 

 white juice, resembling milk in taste, which is used as an 

 article of food ; and nearly all the tropical species of nettles 

 yield it in the form of lac, resin, or india-rubber. 



The question, then, arises. What is this peculiar liquid, 

 and what useful office does it perform in the economy of 



