THE BEEAD FRUIT FAMILY. 



223 



Division 2.- — Diehlamyds (page 211). 



THE BREAD FRUIT, MULBERRY, AND NETTLE 

 ALLIANCE. 



The Bread Fruit Family. 



(artocarpace^.) 



Trees or shrubs with alternate, entire or lobed leaves, and 

 deciduous stipules. Flowers inconspicuous, monoecious or 

 dioecious ; males in compact catkins, females closely seated 

 on a globose or oblong receptacle (clinanthium), which be- 

 comes a fleshy mass, when perfect containing numerous 1- 

 seeded nut-like fruits ; often abortive. 



This family consists entirely of tropical trees, of which 

 above 50 species are enumerated. They abound in a thin 

 milky juice, and possess tough fibrous bark. 



Bread Fruit [Artocarpus incisa). A tree, native of 

 Otaheite, and other islands of the Pacific Ocean, attaining 

 the height of 20 to 30 feet, having spreading branches and 

 rough, lobed leaves. Its fruit (so called) consists of a spongy 

 receptacle of a globose or oblong form, like a large melon, 

 about a foot in length ; it is marked on the exterior in a 

 diamonded manner, each mark indicating the place of a female 

 flower. The true fruits consist of nuts imbedded in the mass, 

 but are seldom produced in trees under cultivation. Bread 

 fruit, with the cocoa nut and banana, composes the principal 

 part of the food of the natives of the Pacific Islands. It is of 

 a white and firm texture, something like wheaten bread, and 

 not unpleasant to eat. The bark is very tough, and when 

 beaten out forms the whitest and finest native cloth. 



The Bread Fruit tree was first brought specially into no- 

 tice by the voyages of Captain Cook, and its fame as a food 

 plant led the British Government to deem it worthy of being 

 naturalized in the West Indies. Accordingly, in 1787, the 

 ship Bounty, commanded by Captain Bligh, accompanied by 



