Bitter
or Not Bitter? pdf
Kompong Notes
Coconut Grove, Florida,
Vol. 7. No. 1, March 15, 1972
By Dr. William T. Gillis
Antidesma
Provides Shade and Fruit pdf
The Miami News, Sunday Oct. 16, 1955
By Dr. Julia Morton
A New
antidesma from Indonesia
Fairchild Tropical Garden Bulletin 2(7):6-7. 1947
By Dr. David Fairchild
THERE IS so much interest
these days in the delicious
jelly made of
Antidesma bunius fruits that I think it
may be worth while to tell
of a new,
distinct variety, one that may
even be a distinct species,
that has fruited
here on The Kampong.
This is Number 259 of the Fairchild Garden Expedition. It has
grown from seed I collected on
March
16, 1940, in the market a little
village
in the island of
Madoera which lies just East of
Java.
I was
recovering from a
bad cut on
my leg, which I got by falling down
the
aft hatch of the yacht Cheng Hoduring
the fire
that broke out on her
as we were coasting along the shore
of northern Celebes. We had come to
Soerabaya to have
her ;repaired, and
before
I was able to get out much, a
friend of Captain Kilkenny, Miss
Vannin Manx, offered to motor me over
the
island of Madoera for
a glimpse of its fascinating
culture. We only
spent the day there but I wished it
could have
been much longer, for the soil
being strongly calcareous suggested that the
plants grown there
might do well in our
limestone soils here.
As I poked about in the markets
of the villages trying to
identify the
amazing variety of fruits and
vegetables which are always on show
in
them, my eye caught sight of
a bamboo
tray covered with Antidesma fruits.
Naturally,
I recognized them, but they struck
me as being somehow different from
those of my tree in the Kampong; the fruits were
smaller and
more
crowded on the stem.
I sent a little note with
the seeds
Marian cleaned and packed foe the Air
Post saying that I thought they
might be from another variety of this
interesting
tree, for when I compared the
fruits with the colored
illustrations of
Antidesma
Buriius
in Dr. J. J.
Ochse's book on
the "Fruit of Netherlands India"
I found they were distinctly different.
This was
in March of 1940. How little
I dreamed that a tree grown
from one of
those seeds would be the
first thing I would show on
our own
Kampong in Florida to my friend Ochse after
his arrival to be
Professor of Tropical Economic Botany in
the University of
Miami. How could I dream that while
it was growing into
a handsome tree and bearing quantities of
berries which the bluejays
took a great fancy
to, the whole picture of the Great East
would change
politically; that Japanese warriors would sweep over it, to be chased
off again in their turn; that Dr. Ochse and his family would spend
years in a prison camp and that Java would become a Republic! I cannot
now hold its thick dark leaves in my hand or hold up one of its bunches
of fruit in the sunlight without seeing the confused picture of the
events which followed that visit to Bankalang seven years ago.
This
new form of Antidesma has denser foliage, of a much thicker texture
than the ones we already knew. Its fruits are rounder and on longer
pedicels and the clusters are more compact. The whole little tree has a
distinctive character which I am unable to describe.
I have only
one seedling from the many seeds I sent in, and the fruits it produces
are larger than those I bought in the market. This fact reminds me that
my original tree from the Philippines and another received somewhat
later from the same place have fruits that differ slightly in form, and
one of them ripens much later than the other. I think that if anyone
would plant a thousand seeds of this Antidesma he might very likely get
some striking and much finer seedlings.
"Just why are you so interested in the Antidesma?" I am often asked.
And
my reply is that the tree is a shapely, handsome one, not too large for
any dooryard; its dark-green leaves are glossy and shine in the sun and
in summer it is very gay with its bunches of fruit, first green, then
white, then brilliant red and later a dull black. When the berries are
black they are not only good to eat right off the tree, but the
brilliant red juice makes the excellent jelly which, largely through
the efforts of Mrs. Helen E. Letchworth, has become popular under the
name of Antidesma Jelly! The story of the rise of the Antidesma Jelly
is told in Occasional Paper No. 6 of the Fairchild Tropical Garden.
And
now, with this other promising Antidesma growing here, we have another
step in our knowledge of this remarkable genus of fruit trees, out of
which may come who knows what new flavors. When some enterprising
person takes up their study we may get new jellies which will compete
with the best of the northern ones we became acquainted with in our
childhood — those of us Northerners who have emigrated into
south
Florida.
I recommend this Plant Immigrant from the island of
Madoera to the members of the Fairchild Garden Association who have a
place for a beautiful small tree in their yards. If they are fond of
Antidesma jelly they can gather the fruits, if not, they can leave them
for the bluejays and other birds to feast upon.
The Antidesmas as
Promising Fruit Trees for Florida
Florida Plant
Immigrants,
Occasional Paper No. 6., 1 Oct. 1, 1939.
Fairchild Tropical Garden
By David Fairchild
I
DO NOT KNOW of any better way to become acquainted with a new tree than
to grow it where you can see it every day. You cannot learn so very
much about it through reading and while you may get a faint idea of it
by seeing its photograph, still, the texture of its leaves, the odor of
its flowers, the taste of its fruit—which, after all are very
important
characters—cannot be conveyed to you except in a very general
way by
the printed word or by the halftone.
Even the botanist who has a herbarium specimen of it in his
collection, which he can pore over with his hand lens and compare with
other specimens of related species and learn a host of details which
can only be learned in that way, does not actually know it in the same
sense that the good observer does who grows it in his yard and cares
for it as a pet.
I realize that it is much easier to read about
a tree than to plant a seed and watch it grow into a tree and fight to
protect its life from fungus diseases and insect pests and even,
perhaps, against the indifference of one's gardener. It is regarding a
tree in my yard and some of its relatives that this brief paper is
written.
A short account of it without any illustrations
appeared in the Annual Report of the Florida State Horticultural
Society but I fear fell on deaf ears for I have heard nothing from it.
I trust this story may meet a kinder fate.
The first time I ever saw a plant of the genus
Antidesma,
to which the subject of my story belongs, was in the "arboretum" which
Mr. Charles Deering started and later for various reasons abandoned to
the real estate developers. Mr. Deering had received many new plants
from our Office of Plant Introduction in Washington and every time I
came to Florida I went to see how they were coming along. As I was
walking over the place I saw, half hidden by other plants, a small
bunch of brilliant red berries that reminded me faintly of a bunch of
currants.
Although sour, they were interesting and I remember
thinking that they would perhaps be exciting to a northern botanist who
has so few really new fruits to get excited over. The shrub was marked
Antidesma nitidum,
Tulasne. and it had grown from seed sent in from the Philippines. In
his description of it, Dr. C. F. Baker who sent it in and who was a
brother of Ray Stannard Baker, the author, and himself a great
entomologist, had this to say about it: "One of the finest local
shrubs, of good shape and covered with great numbers of pendant
clusters of small berries which are long, bright red, finally black,
and which are edible. This would make an important addition to
ornamental shrubs for warm countries."
Here was Baker's
recommended shrub and it was fruiting. Edward Simmonds and I thought
enough of it to take its portrait and record its behaviour and I have
its portrait before me now. But astonishing as it may seem to some of
my readers who imagine that introducing and establishing new plants is
easier than it is, this is practically all I have today to remind me
that
Antidesma nitidum
ever
flourished in America. This was in 1916, three years after Baker had
sent the seeds from Los Banos and we had given them the S. P. I. number
34695.
A few notes on its behaviour remain; one made just after
the great freeze of 1917 when the temperature in Mr. Deering's
arboretum went to 26° F. or lower, states that the group of
small trees
that had been in fruit had been killed back to the ground. I mourned
its disappearance from the garden. However, it had not been killed out,
for in 1922, on another visit I saw it again and recorded that "the
bushes of
Antidesma
nitidum
were literally loaded with dark red, almost black berries and I could
have picked half a gallon of these fruits, I feel sure. They taste a
little like blueberries but are a trifle resinous. They color the hands
like blueberries and would make stunning pies. This is a bush that we
should put in people's yards."
Tree of
Antidesma
bunius, on "The Kampong," that bears several bushels of
fruit every
August. It began bearing when six years old and might be compared with
a giant currant bush
for the clusters of fruit hang down in a similar way and make a
delicious jelly that is comparable
in color and quality to currant jelly. It has several names in Java and
the Philippines but
its scientific name has become established here. Nathan Sands, who
takes care of it, posing.
Whatever became of those bushy
little trees I have never known. The advent of the Florida boom swept
the "Deering Buena Vista Estate" into oblivion and, so far as I know,
the plant has disappeared from South Florida; unless some seedlings
have survived somewhere. Perhaps some reader of these lines can say.
But this was not the only antidesma on the Deering place and in 1917 I
noted that some plants of
Antidesma
bunius,
(L.) Spreng., one of its cousins, had been frozen to the ground. This
species had been also sent in from the Philippines the same year that
Baker had sent the other species. Since it came from an official of the
Bureau of Agriculture in Manila without any advertisement of any kind,
one of my colleagues in the Office in Washington hunted up the
literature about it and published under our Introduction number 43544 a
resume of the account of it given by the noted forester of British
India, Sir Dietrich Brandis, in his "Indian Trees," and what John
Lindley had to say about it in his "Treasury of Botany." This included
a statement that the leaves are used as a remedy for snake bites, the
bark for rope making, and that the wood when immersed in water becomes
black and as heavy as iron, etc. It was also stated that the very juicy
red fruits turn black when ripe and are about one-third of an inch in
diameter, sub acid in taste and used in Java for preserving, chiefly by
Europeans, and that they formerly sold for two pence a quart;
furthermore, that it was called the "Bignai."
It was not any of
these published accounts however, that led me to follow up my
acquaintance with this species. It was a remark made by Charles H.
Steffani, one of my former associates in the Brickell Avenue garden,
now the County Agent of Dade County. I enquired of him one day what had
become of the
Antidesma
nitidum
that had made such a promising beginning on Mr. Deering's place and he
replied, "I don't know, but it was not so good as the other species
anyway;
Antidesma bunius.
That's a wonderful tree. I have seen it loaded down with a bushel of
fruit and it makes a fine jelly." Whether it was he who secured me a
plant I do not recall. I have it in my notes that in 1928 the plant I
had set out north of my study was nine feet tall.
From that date
the struggle began. The beautiful, large, leathery, glossy leaves with
which its branches were covered and which gave the tree a very elegant
appearance, began to show signs of a scale insect. The undersides of
the leaves became coated with the translucent bodies of the insect from
the backs of which tiny drops of honeydew fell on the leaves below them
and in this a form of Sooty Mould fungus grew, forming dense,
soot-black felts that were most unsightly.
These disfigured the
foliage so that the young tree which I passed in going to my study,
became a disagreeable sight. "Volck" had fortunately been discovered so
my man Sands and I brought it into play. For a time though it was a
matter of doubt if it would be effective. Every few days I went over
the leaves to see if there were any live scales left with their caches
of young ones under their tortoise-shell-like bodies and, if I found
any the "Volck" had to be applied again. At last we were successful,
and slowly the beautiful foliage of the tree began to so charm me that
I did not care whether the tree fruited or not.
To my surprise
Sands announced one autumn that during my absence in August it had
borne a big crop of black fruits which the birds had taken because
nobody was there to pick and cook them. Since many of the fruits must
have fallen on the ground I looked for seedlings but there were none.
The next season Sands planted a lot of the seeds in a flat but none of
them grew and my suspicions were aroused and I dipped into the
literature; to discover that the
Antidesma
bunius is
a dioecious species, bearing only female flowers on one tree and males
on another. My tree was evidently a female, but there was no other tree
of the species anywhere about. How could it bear the full crops that it
had begun now to produce without any pollination? Again we tried to
raise seedlings, again without success. Thinking that there might be
somewhere in the Homestead region other trees of this species I
enquired of Dr. H. S. Wolfe and he informed me that there was a male
tree near the Subtropical Experiment Station and took me to see it when
it was in full bloom. Cutting a few male flower clusters I brought them
home and tied them carefully to female clusters on my tree which I
think ensured pollination, but again there was no germination of the
seeds that formed in the fruits borne by the clusters which had been
pollinated. I came to the conclusion that there was something wrong
perhaps in our seed-flat technique. I have since raised a few
seedlings, but only very few, from the many seeds we have planted.
Unlike most fruit trees, the Antidesma produces male flowers on one
tree and female flowers on
another. The date palm of the desert and the carob tree of Italian
hillsides does the same.
In this enlarged photograph the curious male flowers without petals or
sepals can be seen on
the flower spike on the right; each with its three stamens; each stamen
with two pollen masses
at its tip. The spike on the left has only female flowers, each with a
stigma seated on what will
become a berry when it matures. It will be well to have both male and
female trees on one's
place although my tree bore with no male anywhere near it.
In
the meantime I called the fruit of my antidesma to the attention of
Mrs. Helen E. Letchworth who had specialized in the making of jellies
and who was selling her product on the Miami Curb Market. She came with
her car the following August and together with her husband stripped the
tree of its load of fruit and made of them a very beautiful, dark red
jelly which she was able to sell to her customers at a good price. For
the past four years she has taken the fruits and made jelly from them
and we have had on our shelves jars of her antidesma jelly and tried it
on our many guests, getting from them universally favorable responses.
I have come to look upon this jelly as the equal of currant jelly, even
though there is involved here a matter of my childhood memories, for
currant jelly brings up the picture of my mother and the house where I
was born in Michigan and all sorts of delightful memories. But I can
imagine that as the years pass and antidesma jelly comes to be made in
South Florida as commonly as is currant jelly in Michigan, there may
come upon the stage a generation to whom childhood memories of it add
to its interest and make it preferred by them to currant jelly.
There
is another factor in the case of this antidesma. Whereas the currant
bushes growing in every garden in New England are known by some
varietal name such as the "Cherry," the "Currant," the "Fay," the
"Wilder" etc., and represent in each case a selected seedling from
which canes have been taken for propagation, my antidesma tree, which
by the merest chance, so to say, has come to stand in the "Kampong,"
may be an inferior seedling when compared -with other seedlings. Who
can tell what the best seedling of which the species is capable would
be like? Whether the berries may not be twice as large and juicier and
of better flavor than mine? Indeed I have just heard of a superior
strain of this species in the Philippines.
Pretending I am young
again and prepared to tackle the creation of a superlatively fine new
fruit of the antidesma species, I have imagined myself introducing the
best fruiters to be found among the over ninety species of the genus
Antidesma
which the botanical collectors have discovered scattered through the
jungles and prairies of the Old World tropics. As I pored over the
volumes of botanical descriptions, there opened before me a most
interesting vista of possibilities. It appears that the primitive
people of the tropical world have paid a good deal of attention to the
antidesma trees of their localities. My own tree thus became the
starting point for a journey of many thousands of miles on the other
side of the globe.
Before, however, opening up the book vista
concerning the antidesmas, there is a question which I would like to
raise. What would be an appropriate common name for this new class of
fruits? We have quite gaily called this
Antidesma bunius,
which happens to be the first species of which the fruit has been made
into jelly in South Florida, by its generic name of "antidesma."
Perhaps some have imagined that this use of the scientific name for its
common name gets us away from the tangle of common names. But what
shall we call the next species of antidesma (
A. nitidum
for example) to fruit and be used for jelly? It must have a common
name. If we call the first introduction "antidesma" will the situation
not be much as if when the first citrus fruit was introduced it took
the name "citrus" as its own common name. Let us imagine that this
first introduction was what we now call the lime. We could not very
well have called the lemon, when it was introduced, citrus too; and the
orange and the pomelo and the kumquat, for they are just as much citrus
species to the botanists as is the lime.
I fear we shall have to
recognize the chaotic character of common names and accept for the
antidesma some native East Indian name which was given to it, perhaps
centuries ago, in some native village by some unknown plantsman.
According to this principle,
Antidesma
bunius
might take the Philippine name of "Bignai" and any superior seedlings
of it that are worthy of special names be called the Smith Bignai or
the Jones Bignai which would bring them into line with the King Apple
and the Bartlett Pear. Perhaps some one will suggest we use the
complete scientific name and call our fruit jelly
Antidesma bunius
jelly and varieties of it the Smith
Antidesma bunius
jelly, etc. The popular demand for brevity will, I fear, never permit
of the use of such clumsy names, although I have to admit that the man
on the street does memorize "sulphanilamide" and the chemists have no
trouble with "hexamethylenediamine."
To return to the literature.
Antidesma
bunius is
known and given special names by the Battacks and Lampongs of Sumatra,
by the Buginese and natives of Celebes, and the people of Timor, that
far away island in the Timor Sea, north of Australia. It is referred to
as the "Bignai" or "Bignay" in the Philippines; in Java it is called
"Booni" by the Malays, "Wooni" by the Javanese and "Boorneh" by the
Madurese, while the Sundanese of West Java even distinguish by separate
names the male and the female trees.
It is a much cultivated
tree, according to J. J. Ochse who figures it in color in his beautiful
book "Fruits and Fruit Culture in the Dutch East Indies," which was
published in Java in 1931. The fruits when fresh are very much relished
by the natives, he says, and are used by them for syrups and jams and
also for putting into brandy. In that part of the world the
Antidesma bunius
bears its fruits at divers seasons but is most prolific in September
and October. The scientific name Antidesma was given the tree to denote
its use by the natives as a cure for snake bites, against which,
according to the Dutch botanist J. Burmann, who wrote the Flora of
Ceylon in 1737, it was used in those early days.
According to K.
Heyne, the Director of the museum in Buitenzorg, Java, where thousands
of tree products of the Malay Archipelago are exhibited, the bark of
our
Antidesma bunius
contains
an alkaloid and it has been used medicinally, as have also the leaves.
This does not indicate that the leaves are poisonous; on the contrary
they are edible, as is evidenced by the statement in Mr. J. J. Ochse's
other book, "The Vegetables of the Dutch East Indies," that "the young
leaves are eaten raw or steamed as a lablab." This Malay word stands
for a class of side dishes much used by the vegetarian inhabitants of
Java, consisting of leaves, fruits, sometimes also flowers or tubers,
usually eaten raw with rice but sometimes steamed, singed or cooked.
Since
my tree is just this moment coming into new leaf I have now as I write,
my mouth full of antidesma leaves. They are pleasantly acid, very
tender and altogether palatable. Who can say what vitamins they may
contain? In these days when the ideas of the chemists regarding the
synthetic enzymes which build up the protein molecules of our bodies
are in their infancy, who can predict where and in what plants new and
valuable enzymes will be found? My antidesma tree has acquired a new
interest since I learned that its leaves are a choice vegetable in Java.
It appears that this
Antidesma
bunius
was brought into the Moluccas before the time of Rumphius, for he
included it in his "Herbarium Ambionense," written before the days of
Linnaeus. It is therefore a very old cultivated tree indeed. It occurs
wild, according to Burkhill, from the foot of the Himalayas through
Ceylon and eastward as far as northern Australia. And for the reason
that it can struggle against the vicious "lalang" grass (
Imperata cylindrica)
which is slowly destroying millions of acres of virgin forest in the
oriental tropics every year, this tree is considered valuable even
aside from its edible fruits. It may find a place in the forestry
program in Florida.
But what does the literature say of the other species of this genus
Antidesma
of which there are ninety? According to Burkill's recently published
"Dictionary of the Economic Products of the Malay Peninsula"*
Antidesma alatum is
a small tree occurring from Siam southward and having scarlet fruits.
A cuspidatum is
common in the Malay peninsula and has fruits of which the birds are
fond.
A. gbaesembilla
is a shrub or small tree the acid leaves of which are edible as well as
the fruits.
A. montanum
is a small tree occurring from China to Borneo and Java and throughout
the Malay Peninsula and has fruits that the children eat.
A. stipulare
is a shrub found in the Moluccas and on the west coast of the Malay
Peninsula with edible fruits that are used as a medicine for children.
A. tomentosum is
found in all the mountainous parts of the Malay Peninsula and in Java
and its fruits are sometimes eaten.
A. velutinosum
is a 4 5-foot tree found from Burma through the western parts of
Malaysia and is very common in the Malay Peninsula and the fruits are
reported as edible.
One of the most delicious and beautiful of the jellies for sale on the
Miami market is made
from the almost black fruits of this
Antidesma bunius. When
in fruit the tree is completely
covered with these black clusters, making it a spectacular sight.
Ferdinand Pax, in his article on the Order
Euphorbiaceae—the order to which the antidesma
belongs—published in
Engler and Prantl's "Pflanzen Familien," an encyclopedic work on the
plants of the world, mentions West Africa, Sumatra, Japan, Madagascar,
the Liu Kiu Islands and the Fiji Islands as localities where species of
this genus are to be found. Curiously enough he says nothing about
whether the fruits are edible or not; doubtless many of them are. The
fact that this character is not mentioned in a botanical description
does not mean that the matter was overlooked by the author of the
description. It generally indicates that the collector of the specimens
which found their way into the herbarium or the museum where the books
were written, found the fruits difficult to preserve or he collected
the plant when it was not in fruit or was little interested in the
matter of the edible character of its fruits anyway and reported
nothing with regard to this feature.
According to Guilfoil in
his "Australian Plants Suitable for Gardens, Parks, Timber Preserves,
etc." Melbourne; a large fruited species
A. dallachyanum is
known in
Australia as the Herbert River Cherry, Queensland Cherry or Je-jo. This
appears to be one of the largest fruited species in the genus and the
juice is said to be found very grateful to persons suffering from
fever. The "Niggers-cord" is another species found in north Australia.
It is referred to
A.
ghaesembilla and is said to have edible fruits and be used
for medicine.
Enough
has probably been said to show that an unexplored field for any willing
plant breeder has been opened. One of the objects of this paper is to
illustrate the fact which long residence in South Florida has taught
me, that the plants I have about me are tied by close relationships to
others that might be even more interesting, had we only seeds of them
to grow and the time to watch them come into fruit. It goes without
saying that a search for these relatives of my
Antidesma bunius
tree would take one into some of the fascinatingly interesting places
of the world.
And
now, just as I am copying for publication this account of the tree in
my yard in Coconut Grove and preparing at the same time for a Fairchild
Garden Expedition to the islands of the Moluccas, there comes a letter
from Mrs. Harold Loomis who is stopping in "The Kampong" during our
absence in which she says: "The antidesmas are all gathered. When only
the big tree had been picked, the Letchworths compressed 52 gallons of
pure juice from the fruit. Isn't that amazing?"
I could hardly find a more enthusiastic note with which to close this
fragmentary account of the antidesmas.
Biological Nucleus Baddeck, Nova Scotia.
*
Burkill, I. H. A dictionary of the Economic Products of the Malay
Peninsula. 2 vols. Publ. by the Crown Agents for the Colonies, 4
Millbank, London 1935. A most valuable book of reference.
