Breadfruit and Bligh - The Captain's Artocarpus Incise

Anyone who ever stepped ashore in the Caribbean has seen them and marvelled, hung with their trademark large green globes, not quite football sized usually but certainly heavier, and big enough to satisfy several appetites at one sitting. Widespread and prolific, you’ll spot them in backyards and boulevards and most places in between, and never confuse them with the cannonball tree. They seem such a part of island landscapes as to have been around forever but that’s far from the case. So whither did it come this island staple, the solidly reassuring breadfruit? And therein lies a story, a gloriously improbable one, writ large in the annals of seamen, tall tales and naval history.

In the late 18th Century plantations in Jamaica and St Vincent struggled to feed their slaves at times while elsewhere in the Pacific British botanist Joseph Banks, who was accompanying Captain Cook, had noted breadfruit as a major food source amongst the South Sea islanders. Plans for transhipment were made and on April 4th 1789 HMS Bounty under Captain William Bligh set sail from Tahiti with 1,085 of the precious seedlings bound for St Vincent. Every schoolchild, and some grown ups, know what happened next. Come on, you should, it’s been immortalized in film and word a few times too.

The Mutiny three weeks into the voyage on April 28th was led by Fletcher Christian and resulted in Bligh and nineteen loyalists being set adrift in an open 23foot launch, effectively a rowing boat in the Pacific. A year later, Bligh was back in England a hero having somehow navigated 3,600 miles of Southern Pacific ocean to Timor, an epic journey in any era and now considered as the greatest act of courage and open boat seamanship in history. By 1793 he was back in Tahiti and delivering the inaugural consignment to Kingstown, St Vincent where his diligence is duly recorded on a suitably impressive tree specimen in the Botanical Gardens: “Breadfruit Artocarpus Incise - a sucker from one of the original plants introduced by Captain Bligh in 1793 on HMS Providence” it proudly proclaims.

A year later they were growing around the Caribbean, and nourishing generations of West Indians ever since. It came as quite a surprise a couple of years ago to learn that Jonathan Agnew, BBC Radio’s Cricket Correspondent, an erudite and worldly man and veteran of several full tours of the Caribbean, had neither heard of nor set eyes upon the self same arboreal wonder. Remarkable. After all, the glossy green foliage, rent into long leaved yellow veined fingers, is as distinctive as the fruit itself, especially when glistening in the rain. It’s not to everyone’s taste of course, and an overcooked breadfruit is dry and starchy. Rosemary Parkinson however, the Caribbean’s First Lady of Food and all things thereof, has a few ideas on how to maximise this most singular of fruit—firstly, like all locals, regard it as a vegetable, "It’s dense and heavy and don’t try and carry more than a handful or you’ll do yourself a mischief."

Some people swear that roasting is best, over coals for about an hour, the skin peeled off later and buttermelt poured over the fleshy white interior, avoiding the pithy core (breadfruit cou-cou in Barbados has herbs and spices added to the mash); it’s used in soups, for pickling, in oil downs and is excellent when sliced, baked or fried too (don’t over indulge though, it’s filling, and that from someone who likes to nyam). The blossom can be made into jams, the flour into porridge or dumplings, and all manner of medicinal benefits are attributed from a chewing gum pain reliever made from the sap to bush tea from the leaves to counteract headaches, asthma and high blood pressure. Young buds are also chewed for mouth and throat ailments.

Whatever its benefits, the tree looks here to stay, West Indian to its Pacific roots. If “breadfruit” hadn’t stuck, then “lifefruit” could have worked.

The Fruits of Nevis - Are They All Native?

In memory of Jim Johnson (www.WalkNevis.com) who died tragically on Nevis last week we are re-publishing a series of his articles over the coming weeks. Each one gives a fascinating insight into the man, his love of Nevis and his infinite knowledge of natural life on this beautiful Caribbean island.


'The Fruits of Nevis' by Jim Johnson
Many people come to Nevis and often ask about the many fruits that they see! Questions include : Are they native? What are they? Are they really fruit? How do you eat them? The answers vary...

Some are native and some are not, some we are not sure! Mangos (over 50 varieties), papayas (at least 20 types), and oranges are not. They are primarily “Old World” fruits, originating in Asia or Africa or Europe. Sour Sop, Sugar Apples, and Custard Apples are all originally from the Caribbean (so is Passion Fruit which is technically a vegetable)! Guavas and Bananas grow wild and while some varieties are native, most are not.

Most of the fruit can be eaten straight off the tree, but some cannot. Many people are sensitive to the skin of Mangos, so the fruit must be washed before they can handle them. Mangos are also cooked in a variety of ways. Sour Sop (that strange thorny fruit on the roadside) can be eaten plain or made into soups and sorbets. Plantains and green bananas are mainly fried. Sugar and Custard Apples you eat straight from the tree and as fast as possible before some child comes and steals them from you!

It should be noted that regular apples, peaches and pears all require cold weather to bear, so are imported rather than grown locally. The same applies to oranges, tangerines and citrus, the local ones are always green, but grapefruits are originally from Barbados!

So come, relax, and enjoy some local fruits (or the drinks and wines made from them)!

For more information please see our Definitive Caribbean Guide to Nevis.

Good Morning - A Lesson in Manners

It’s one of those aspects of West Indian life. You are expected to greet people, when you meet them. Even if you don’t know them. It sometimes seems odd, coming from a big city in which people barely even look one another in the eye. But in the islands, people say hello when they pass in the street, often from the opposite sides of the road, despite the fact that they do not know the other person. People even say good-morning when then get on a bus in some islands, to an assembled company of people they don’t know. An exchange cannot pass properly until you have.

I found myself standing in a bakery in Roseau in Dominica, waiting my turn to buy a rock cake and one of the island’s fantastic juices this time, for a belated breakfast. I am surrounded by schoolchildren who are on their break. I am about to make my order when all goes quiet. A ‘big man’ walks in. he is covered with gold. Perhaps he is a hood. They all seem to know him, anyway. He walks straight up to the counter and says:

‘Gimme a pattie. Beef.’ He points.

There is a pause, as the lady behind the counter holds his eye. Two seconds, three, four...

‘Good morning’, she says.

It stops him in his tracks. Suddenly everyone is minutely interested in the signs on the wall, anything but the main counter. He says good morning before he asks her more politely.

Oooh what a put down...

A few things you probably never knew about Bananas

Bananas plants are not trees. Technically they are actually very large herbs. They grow from a rhizome, on a stem of tightly packed leaves a bit like a cigar. They can grow as tall as five metres or more.

They fruit once, producing a proboscis that droops down, on which grows a ‘bunch’ of bananas.

A bunch of bananas is not the cluster of eight or ten bananas that you buy in a supermarket. These are often called ‘hands’ (well, they do look like so many fingers, I suppose). A bunch is usually about ten hands and can weight 35 kilos.

Bananas themselves grow ‘upside down’. As the proboscis hangs down, so the square black point of the banana, the unattached end, points upwards.

But surely the loveliest fact is the banana’s botanical name. It is called musa sapientum, or ‘the muse of wise men’. You can just imagine an early guru (bananas originate in the East) sitting in the shade of a banana plant, enjoying the fruit and having spontaneous wise thoughts.

Caribbean Citrus Fruit - Shaddock, Tangor, Ortanique

As you’d expect, there are many different types of citrus fruit in the Caribbean. You’ll see them in colourful piles in the markets - limes, lemons, oranges (or ‘greens’ as some of them ought to be known) and grapefruits. And you can have fun picking and crushing their leaves. They release an oily but tangy citrus smell.

But in Jamaica you will find other citrus fruits besides these, and they have their own idiosyncratic names. The shaddock, for instance, which is closely related to the grapefruit. Elsewhere it is known as the pomelo, but here it took this name from the Seventeenth Century English ship’s captain that introduced it to the island. And the tangor, as it is known in the rest of the world, a hybrid of the tangerine and a sweet orange. This name is just so much prosaic nonsense to the Jamiacans. For them it is an ortanique, part orange and part tangerine finished off with the -ique of unique.

And finally there is the delightfully named ugli fruit, which is exactly what its name says it is, a squat fruit with a nobbled and warty skin. It is a hybrid of a grapefruit, the orange and a tangerine. And just to prove the expression - beauty really is only skin deep in this case – its flesh is not ugly at all, but juicy and pleasant.