Breadfruit

Bread-fruit, Artocarpus incisa, a native of the South Sea Islands, is a most valuable tree forming the type of the order Artocarpaceae. The soft timber and fibrous bark are employed, and the latex containing caoutchouc is used as glue and for caulking boats. The leaves are large, dark-green, and lobed like those of its ally the fig, and they have large convolute stipules. The male flowers are in long club-shaped spikes, and the pistil-bearing ones in round heads. Each ovary is one-chambered and one-ovuled with two stigmatic lobes; but the whole female inflorescence, as in the allied mulberry, gives rise to one "fruit" or infrutescence, of large size, green externally, but white and farinaceous within. The best varieties have no seeds, but are propagated by suckers. The fruit is roasted or baked for food, and forms the chief diet in the South Seas. The bread-fruit was introduced into the West Indies by H.M.S. Bounty, after Captain Cook's voyages of exploration.