Every Tree Bears Fruit

In my travels throughout South Florida inspecting trees and landscapes, I come across many different kinds of fruit trees. Some of these trees are very common and well known to us, like the mango and avocado. Others – like the ackee, breadfruit, genip and tamarind – while also fairly common in our area, are better known to those who have lived or spent time in other tropical countries.

Many of these fruit trees look quite alike and I am often confronted with uncommon tree species that I can’t accurately identify without fruit or flowers, since the foliage on many trees can be very similar and we have many different species of trees growing in our area that are not very common.

When asking about the fruit of a tree I am often told “This tree doesn’t have a fruit,” since the property owner has never seen any on that tree. Well, all trees have fruit. This is a fact. Trees and shrubs produce fruit so they can reproduce. The seeds of that tree or shrub species are inside the fruit, or sometimes the entire fruit is a single seed, like the coconut.

A very common query I get is whether or not the fruit of a tree is edible. Yes – to a degree. Some fruit you can eat “out of hand” or directly off the tree, or palm if you are eating the insides of a coconut.

Other fruit is quite poisonous and has to be prepared correctly so you don’t get sick; the ackee is a good example. This is delicious when prepared properly, but if you eat it too soon you will get very ill. Some people are also very allergic to certain fruit, such as the mango. The skin of a mango can be quite toxic to certain individuals.

We have many species of ficus that grow in our area. Some species are the dominant trees of our landscapes; others are diminutive in size or even vines.

The ficus family is a very large pantropical plant family with 700 to 800 different species. The edible Ficus carica is one most people are familiar with, at least foodwise, as most of us have eaten figs. This is an uncommon species in South Florida as it prefers Mediterranean climates. They do not like our high humidity and I rarely see healthy plants here.

Some ficus species are also vines. Creeping fig or Ficus pumila is a very common vine utilized in landscapes in South Florida and can bear almost golf ball-sized fruit. Would you enjoy eating it? When it is ripe the fruit tastes very insipid to me, but I suppose if you cooked it and wrapped it with something more favorable perhaps it would be tastier.

Edibility and palatability are relative. Many types of fruit are often described ethnobotanically as famine-type fruit. People eat these fruits when there is nothing else left to eat even if the fruit are mildly poisonous. Are they edible? I suppose. Do you want them growing in your landscape? Sure, if they are an attractive landscape species, but typically most people would not consider them edible. You would have to be pretty hungry to eat the fruit of the so-called sausage tree, or Kigelia africana. It is very common in the older landscapes of South Florida but no one recognizes it without the long sausage-looking fruit hanging from its branches.

It is a shame that with all the redevelopment in South Florida and especially in Miami that mature fruit trees are rapidly disappearing. They add a look of livability to the landscape.

A while back I was introduced to a section of the book of Deuteronomy. This is the fifth book of the Jewish Torah that consists of three sermons or speeches delivered to the Israelites by Moses. In section 20 part 19 one can read “If you surround and attack a city for a long time, trying to capture it, do not destroy its trees with an ax. You can eat the fruit from the trees, but do not cut them down. These trees are not the enemy, so don’t make war against them.”

I am glad to know that some developers actually take this ancient law to heart and will not cut down fruit trees on a property that they are considering for development. Perhaps some of our more devout politicians will take this ancient law and incorporate it into city code and enforce it.

Jeff Shimonski is an ISA-certified arborist municipal specialist and retired director of horticulture at Parrot Jungle. Contact him at jeff@tropicdesigns.com.