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Fruit-bearing Trees - Jack

Fruit with many features

Next only to mango, the jack is the favourite fruit of Chennaivasis. It is not so only because of its taste but also because of its medicinal and ritualistic value. The jack tree, botanically called Artocarpus heterophyllus or Artocarpus integrifolia and palapazham in Tamil, a native tree of India, is found wild in the Western Ghats, but is grown in various parts of India, mainly for its fruits, whose edibile parts can be got at only after a very laborious effort.

References made to the tree in Ramayana and the fruit's build-up into the proverbs of the Indian languages lend support to the view that jack is an indigenous tree of India. A mother to be is blessed thus: 'May you give birth to a baby that would be like a jack fruit'.

Indeed, the Hindu housewives observe a 'nombu' (a ritualistic function performed to mark grant of a favour in answer to the prayers made to the gods) where she makes a presentation of 16 fruits to women who are happily living in the company of their husbands, one of a kind every year. One such gift must necessarily be palapazham. This idea is that the giver will have an equally happy life as the receiver, the happiness sourced by bearing bonny babies that look like jack fruit.

The jack tree is a large evergreen growing up to about 40-45 feet tall. Often seen growing in the backyards of Chennai homes, the jack exhibits a variety of peculiar features - a veritable botanical museum of sorts.

First, its leaves are not all alike in shape, though by and large they are ovate and have a shiny, leathery surface. Some of the leaves stop growing in some areas of their surface with the result that leaves where such a stoppage of growth occurs, look different. So much so, on the same tree, one sees quite a variety of different-shaped leaves, a situation that is described as one of habitual heterophylly by botanists.

A second peculiarity is that the inflorescence (flower-bearing branch) does not arise either from the angle which a leaf makes with the stem or terminally, at the end of a vegetative branch, as in most cases. Instead, they grow out from a part of the trunk, old in age, a feature that is referred to as cauliflory. This is why you see jack fruit growing upon the trunk, rather than among foliage. Of course, cauliflory is seen in a quite few other trees also, for example, fig.

A third peculiar feature is that the entire flowering branch grows into one composite fruit. Compare this with what we saw in the custard apple. In the custard apple, in which the female part (gynoecium) of the flower consists of many separate ovaries, each ovary grows into a fruit let and all these fruitlets eventually coalesce rather uneasily.

But in the jack, the entire inflorescence grows into a single composite fruit, called multiple fruit. So, while in custard apple from one flower several fruits come up (though by coalescence, look like one), in jack, from an entire inflorescence (flowering branch), one single composite fruit arises. The inflorescence of jack is called hypanthodium. It has a central axis upon which several male and female flowers are borne.

Once pollination followed by fertilisation is over, the fertilised female flowers begin to develop into fruits. The fruits themselves are not of significance. What you call calyx and corolla - here, together referred to as perianth because of lack of any distinction - begin to receive large supplies of food natural and swell. Due to this swelling and the concurrent elongation and other kinds of growth of the axis, a large fruit results.

The outer skin of the fruit is green and warted. These warts are sheaths through which the styles of the fertilised female flowers passed. Each 'fruit' has a membranous bag with a single, large seed inside it. However, all the female flowers do not get fertilised. Since fertilisation is the stimulus causing inflow of foods (mainly starch) into the perianth, these unfertilised flowers remain ribbon-like, with a dark pip in the centre. That pip is the one that might have been the fruit if the flower had been fertilised and it corresponds to the seed and the membranous bag by which it is covered. Fruit like that of jack is technically called 'sorosis'.

And, of course, the last peculiar feature has already been mentioned. The edible part is made up of perianth.

The medicinal value of jack has been known to the tribals for centuries. The Santals use the paste of the young shoot or flower in the treatment of post-delivery complications. They use the leaf as a plaster on the sores on skin, thigh and other parts of the body.

That makes me wonder whether Sourav Ganguly's problem could have been solved far more effectively and quickly, enabling him to partake in the Triseries (Nov 1, 2003). The leaf, dried and powdered, is used to remove the pits formed on the skin as a result of small pox.

Mixed with jaggery, the powdered leaf and young shoots are used in the treatment of carbuncle and also a lactogogue. Charaka Samhita recommends the use of the ripe fruit in the treatment of piles. It says consumption of jacks enhances the attractiveness of skin colour, as also increases life span.

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A close cousin of jack is the breadfruit tree, Artocarpus incisa. Years ago, I saw a breadfruit tree in the compound of a house on Pachaiyappa's Hostel Road. When the sailors of Captain Cook rebelled because of exhaustion of foods on the ship, the rebellion was quelled by feeding the sailors with slices of breadfruit, properly roasted, a practice which the captain noticed among the natives of modern-day Indonesian islands.

An absorbing novel, called 'Mutiny on the Bounty', is written around this incident. I did not try the fruit myself. I hope some of my readers will and give me a feedback.