NAOMI WEST: A little bit of Cryptobotany

A year ago, my husband Richie, my cousin Matt and I went trekking through the woods outside my house, near the river bed, when we stumbled across a strange looking fruit. At least, we assumed it was a fruit, but it was a kind we’d never seen before: green, with bumps that gave it a “brainish” appearance. There were probably five of these types of fruit lying around on the ground. It was so alien to us that we were afraid to even break one open, but we finally worked up the nerve and discovered a pale, fleshy inside. Our curiosity somewhat sated, we moved on.

Once home, I did some searching online and found that the closest match to our mysterious fruit was Breadfruit. However, Breadfruit is only supposed to grow in the South Pacific. Despite my intrigue at having found the fruit in our dry Texas climate, I forgot about it until two days ago when I mentioned it to a friend. She was incredulous. “You did NOT find Breadfruit in Texas. That is impossible. I couldn’t even get it to grow in Puerto Rico!"

I insisted that I HAD found it, whether it had fallen out of an airplane or been bought from a market and spirited to the middle of the woods for whatever reason.

Now that my friend had planted the idea that I might have an anomaly on my property, I became obsessed with returning to the woods to see if I could find the breadfruit again. So yesterday evening, braving the heat, the allergens, and the snakes in the summer overgrowth, Richie and I made our way to the area of the woods above the river bank where we had first found the Breadfruit.

Initially, it appeared that there was none, which made me think that possibly it had been displaced to begin with. But just as we were about to surrender to the fading sunlight, Richie spotted it. It was only one this time, but it was the same green ball of fruit with the odd bumps on it. We looked everywhere for its source, but could find no tree that resembled the breadfruit images we had Googled.

Regardless, I was excited, and we took the fruit home with us. I tried calling my friend to tell her we had found the Breadfruit again. I couldn’t reach her, but in the meantime, I decided to research a little further about Breadfruit possibly growing out of its proper climate. When I could find nothing that would indicate this was possible, I decided to find out if there was any fruit that could grow in Texas that resembled breadfruit.

And there is: Maclura pomifera, also known as “osage-orange,” “hedge-apple,” and a few other names. Like the Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis), it belongs to the Moraceae, or Mulberry, family. Unlike the breadfruit, the osage-orange is not edible, though its seed are, but some claim that horses and cows will eat it. Osage-orange is also argued to be an insect repellent. Most interesting, however, is the claim that it kills cancer cells.

While I was a little let down that I hadn’t found some Breadfruit cryptid, I am still excited to have stumbled upon the bizarre hedge-apple. My interest in the flora of Texas has definitely been piqued.

Oh, and to satisfy myself that a person can easily mistake the one fruit for the other, today I showed a picture of an Osage-orange to a Native Hawaiian student of mine and asked him what it was. "Breadfruit," he replied.