Fruits and their flowers

 We, as in most of us, have always been posting flowers and ornamental plants here. There are some who posts vegetable flowers, but of course many flowers we eat are vegetables, e.g. cauliflower, broccolli, etc. Only a few posted fruits and flowers of fruits. Since i already have some of them, i might as well share them with you. Moreover, most of the bloggers are from temperate climes, so they might not be very familiar with how the tropical fruits look like, moreso with their flowers.

Oh this could be a good project for school children, i might as well expand it to cover more fruits. Who knows, a coffee table book on this purpose might also be a good idea, but who will finance that, i don't know. But i am sure, that kind of book, or a reference book will be very helpful most especially for children. Since these are tropical fruits, temperate country readers will benefit from this too. Who cares?

Soursop, Anona muricata, or locally called 'guyabano'. Its flowers arise from the main trunk, or branches. This manner of producing flowers is called cauliflorous, you are right, just like cauliflower. Jackfruit, durian, figs, lansones are all cauliflorous plants.

The flesh is white with black seeds. The flesh when fully ripe can be eaten as that, or can be made into shakes or juice. It can also be blended with some other juices. Just recently, it has been internationally reported to have very good health properties.

Anatto, Bixa orellana, or locally called 'achuete'. It is fascinating that it is called achiote in other parts of the world. As this is native to South America, maybe this is an introduced species centuries ago when Spaniards colonized our country, reason we have the name Philippines. In the current publication of the International Society for Horticultural Sciencd (ISHS), four varieties are being cultivated. Varieties vary in color of the pods. The red-brown pods are good also as an ornamental.

 It is used for flavoring or coloring food dishes to yellow or orange. Those green pods turn dark brown or black when dry and the seeds inside are soaked in water or oil to extract the color. It is now a favored coloring when chemical food colors are claimed to be bad for the health. The white flowers are beautiful though.

We have 2 big plants in our property, which we cut because they are shading a big area depriving many smaller plants in between. Anyway, it is not that useful for us and nobody buys it too.

Coconut, Cocos nucifera. This crop is very familiar to many, but i am sure only a few knows about how its flower looks like. The first 2 photos are the coconut inflorescence. The pod-like structure opens to several spikes containing the individual flowers. The top of the inflorescence contains the males, while the lower parts are the females.  A few fertilized ovules become the coconut that we are familiar with, as shown above. Inside individual coconut fruits is a solid endosperm, where we get the coconut oil and liquid endosperm, which we drink as juice from the young coconuts.

Lots of food, health and industrial benefits come from this crop. Coconut oil, aside from its use in cooking,  has been the craze now for its health benefits, and our country has been exporting lots of Virgin Coconut Oil to the US, Europe,  and others. All parts of coconuts are not wasted as everything has importance. The midribs of the leaves are used for making decors and for making brooms. The trunk specifically can be made into furnitures, floor parquets and a house like the above, which is made from coconut trunks and cement.