This fruit belonging to the jack fruit family is found in tall trees which is a high quality timber used in making furniture. Almost every house would have had a tree like in those days, deliberately planted and for using the timber after thirty or forty years! We had at least five in our garden. The two remaining was cut for timber two years back.
Its fruit is similar to that of a jack fruit, but small with pulp surrounding the seed arranged in a neat fashion around a central stem! Usually the fruit was plucked and kept covered by hay for it to ripen. If left to ripen in the tree, birds and squirrel would go for them!
As there would be hundreds in a tree, most of them were left for the birds! But its was a delicacy that I miss a lot now!It was not sold then or now!
Our neighbours could gather as much as they wanted from our garden!I could do the same! We had a prolonged season of this fruit for about four months!
I found this fruit recently in a tree of about sixty years at Bolgatty palace, Cochin!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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