42 



exuberant. The petiole scars are round, symmetrical, and 

 showy, with easily-seen bundle scars. A breadfruit branch, back 

 of the foliage-bearing portion, is attractively marked with the 

 petiole- and stipule-scars, and lenticels. 



In the Hawaiian Islands the flowering and fruiting season of 

 the breadfruit is very short as compared with that of more tropical 

 countries. It extends from May or June through the summer 

 into August, — a scant three or four months. There is some 

 variation, of course, at different elevations and on the different 

 islands. In the tropical and South Pacific, however, the season is 

 eight to ten months in duration ; in Guam it is about nine months. 

 In a few very favorable Indo-Malaysian regions the tree produces 

 two or three crops annually. 



The flowers are terminal or nearly so, on the young wood, as 

 contrasting with the Jakfruit tree, which fruits from the trunk 

 and old wood. The staminate flowers are compacted in dense, 

 club-shaped catkins, ten to sixteen inches long. At first both 

 the staminate and pistillate clusters are covered by two large, 

 showy spathaceous bracts, which are soon caducous. The peri- 

 gon of the staminate flowers is two-lobed. The male catkin 

 was called Po-ulu by the Hawaiians, who formerly mixed it with 

 the fiber of the wauke in the manufacture of a certain rare kind 

 of tapa called tapa po-ulu. No information is available to indi- 

 cate why the catkins were thus used. 



The female flowers are clustered in subglobular or globular 

 echinate heads, with a spongy receptacle; the perigones are 

 tubular or obovate; pistil with a two or three branched stigma. 

 In the seedless variety no fertilization takes place. The fruit 

 slowly enlarges to a diameter of six to eighteen inches and a weight 

 of one to ten pounds. It is attached by a short, thick stalk, and 

 grows either singly, or in clusters of two or three close together. 

 It is oval or spheroid; bright green at first, becoming brownish 

 when partially ripe, and rich yellow when thoroughly ripe. In 

 the seed-producing typical form the rind is covered with short, 

 hard projections (muricate), but in the seedless cultivated forms 

 it is quite smooth and merely reticulate. The rind is relatively 

 thin and fragile; the fruit bruises easily, and does not stand 

 shipping. 



