How Stuff Grows, Vol. 8

In today’s episode: Multiples & Mutinies!

That funky thing up top? Pandanus fruit.

Specifically, pandanus tectorius from Hawaii, where it’s called hala.

As you might guess by looking at it, sitting there looking all innocent with its little segments, it’s a multiple fruit, like last episode’s jackfruit and figs. Shockingly, however, pandanus is not part of the Crazy Mulberry Family.

„That’s because it’s a palm, duh!“ You’d think so, but no, pandanus isn’t interested in anyone else’s crummy family, screw them all. Pandanus does its own thing.

Which works out, since the pandanus family is so large it has about 750 species in it - and their babies come in all kinds of shapes and sizes:

Pandanus is mainly used for its fruit (only some varieties are edible, though, mostly yielding a starchy flour when ground) and its leaves, which can be woven into baskets and mats etc.

In olden times, Australia’s Aboriginal people used the slow-smouldering wood to carry fire on their travels, which would be pretty metal if it wasn't wood.

The leaves of one cultivated species, pandanus amaryllifolius, are fragrant and are a beloved flavoring in Southeast Asian cuisine.

Extract from these leaves has made its way into Western supermarkets and makes for bright green cakes:

It’s said to taste of grass, rose, vanilla, almond and coconut. Which, personally, triggers some not-good memories of that time I tried a matcha latte, but I’ve never tried pandanus so I know not of what I speak.

Next up, looking like yet another pandanus baby but fooling us all:

Osage oranges, maclura pomifera, also known as hedge apple, horse apple, bodark tree or, my favorite, monkey brains.

Mmmmhhh, monkey brains!

As behooves a good multiple fruit, Osage oranges ARE members of The Crazy Mulberries (I just googled that and I cannot BELIEVE there isn’t a single folk or country band by that name. What an oversight! What a CHANCE!).

Osage oranges are native to the US. They’re small trees or large shrubs and are often used as hedge planting.

The best part about the Osage orange is the wood. It’s good. Better than good. It’s one of the hardest woods grown in the US (except yours at age 14, I know, I know), strong and naturally decay-resistant, so it was used for things like railroad ties, wagon wheels and fence posts.

Most famously, however, the Osage tribe used it to make their renowned bows, which is not only where the name Osage orange comes from but also the name bodark tree - bodark being a slurred version of „bois d’arc“ („bow wood“), as French settlers named it. It’s considered one of the top woods for bow-making to this day (pricy, too).

While the fruit is too dry and tough to be edible for humans, and also oozes a milky latex (plant sap)...

... squirrels will happily take on the challenge to get to the 200 or so seeds inside:

Why so many seeds, you ask?

Well, they come with being a multiple fruit: a fruit that secretly consists of lots of smol individual fruits that grow from very smol individual flowers but merge together as they mature. And it’s one seed per flower. Technically, one seed per flower ovary, but it still freaks me out that flowers have ovaries, so let’s save that for the dreaded final „What Even is a True Nut“ post that I’ve been procrastinating on for like a year now.

These are the female flowers of the Osage orange:

When the fruit is ripe, the dead old bits of flower give it a very... special appearance that 14-year-old you might have described as monkey brains with pubes:

He wouldn’t have been wrong.

Moving on!

Next up, breadfruit, another proud member of The Crazy Mulberries - and you can definitely see the family resemblance:

Native to Polynesia, where it has long been a staple food, breadfruit is very starchy and can be ground into a flour or eaten raw, boiled, fried, baked... ALL the things, basically. Polynesians traditionally used its wood to make canoes and its latex for everything from caulk for those very canoes to medicine to chewing gum.

Breadfruit is seen by many as a superfood staple of the future: it’s fast-growing, requires little care, is extremely prolific, full of complex carbohydrates, nutrients and vitamins, and has a low glycemic index.

The first few of those virtues were also responsible for its spread throughout the tropics, sadly in less happy circumstances: when James Cook „discovered“ breadfruit in Tahiti in 1769, he recognized it as a cheap high-energy food source for British slaves in the Caribbean. Bah! Way to harsh our breadfruit buzz, Cook.

20 years later, William Bligh was sent to Tahiti by the British king to collect breadfruit saplings for just that intended use, but of course his ship was the H.M.S. Bounty and we all know how that went.

Those 1,015 little breadfruit trees in the hold of the H.M.S. Bounty were one of many contributing factors to the mutiny, since having to water the saplings meant even smaller water rations for the crew. When the mutineers took over the ship, they chucked the poor trees into the ocean. Bligh eventually got more breadfruit plants on a subsequent voyage but it turned out people in the Caribbean didn’t care for it much back then. Oh well.

Next up, these guys:

Just to mess with our heads, these are related neither to the pandanus nor the Crazy Mulberries families. In fact, they’re not even a multiple fruit at all!

They’re pine cones. Or, rather, cones of Araucaria angustifolia, a coniferous tree native to Brazil:

Fittingly for such large trees, the pine nuts or pinhão are big ol' chonkers:

Thanks for this go to @InTheDistanceAPlaintiveEnglishHorn who doesn’t just have a brilliant username but also told me about them ages ago in the comments of Vol.6. The pinhão are boiled and eaten and look like they’d taste delicious.

This ancient tree is now critically endangered, mostly because humans have managed to destroy 97% of its natural habitat and maybe also a tiny little bit because @InTheDistanceAPlaintiveEnglishHorn keeps eating the seeds. (Not really. Well, maybe a little bit. But not REALLY really.)

But hey, it’s finally a nut!

Or is it?

Nahhhhhhhh.

The running nut count:

Nut or Not?
Nut: 0
Not: 12 (6 drupes: cashew, nutmeg, pistachio, almond, argan nut, soap nut; 1 legume: peanut; 2 capsule fruits: brazil nut, jojoba nut; 1 berry: shea nut; 2 cones: pine nut, pinhão)

Once again, terribly sorry, Mr. Chipmunk.

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Remember how I called the previous post the penultimate one? Probably not, because it was almost a frigging year ago, hahahahahaha

Anyway, I lied.
This is the penultimate one.
I mean, probably.

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Previously on "How stuff grows":
Vol. 1: https://imgur.com/gallery/Sa2qVJQ
Vol. 2: https://imgur.com/gallery/1f1JZM4
Vol. 3: https://imgur.com/gallery/L7uuuTm
Vol. 4: https://imgur.com/gallery/LcqzWqO
Vol. 5: https://imgur.com/gallery/a9JyTgq
Vol. 6: https://imgur.com/gallery/rQafyGD
Vol. 7: https://imgur.com/gallery/XaDGEOD