Meanwhile, my younger son had no patience for the work and
tended to jump around too close to the pit. Ken graciously diverted him and put
his abundant energy to use by asking him to climb a tall tree over near the
building and bring him back some of the fruit. Always an enthusiastic climber,
Brian quickly disappeared up in the tree. After a while there was some shaking
in the high branches and clusters of green fruits that looked a bit like limes
began dropping on the path.
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| Genip fruit |
Ken showed us how to split the leathery skin, pop the whole
fruit in our mouths and suck on the fleshy pink pulp (which doesn’t easily come
off the seed). The seed is so big it takes up most of the space inside. The
pulp is pretty tart, but sort of sweet too.
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| Genip fruit, pulp and seed |
It is likely that genip fruits, which are native to South
America, were brought to the islands by pre-Columbian settlers. Besides sucking
the pulp, they roasted the seeds to eat like nuts, and also used the juice as a
dye.
Mature genip trees can grow up to 100 feet tall, though most
of the ones here are not that big. They have smooth, grayish bark which is
often blotchy-looking because it is mottled with lichen.
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| Genip tree by Catherineberg ruins with distinctive markings |
The overall number of genip trees on St. John has been
increasing though. They have spread widely because their seeds are dispersed by
birds and bats, as well as people spitting out seeds, and because they can
survive in droughts and a variety of salty, windy ecological conditions. In
parts of the island these trees have invaded the remaining areas of diverse
native forest, crowding out other growth with their abundant saplings.
Cheryl Magdaleno, who has been participating in the
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship’s Tree Appreciation Project, recently showed
me how to identify a genip by its leaf structure. It has four leaflets arranged
in two pairs on a stalk that attaches to the tree. Along the stalk she pointed
out distinctive thin leaf-like structures – like wings. I was very excited to
learn about the leaves, since the method of trying to identify genip trees by
looking for mottled bark was not working very well for me.
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| Young genip leaf showing 'wings' on the leaf stalk |
I recently mentioned
this information about genip leaves to Jessa Buchalter, including the part
about the wings. She promptly went to a tree by her family’s house and came
back with a bunch of genip fruits, along with some of the leaves from that
tree. They were definitely not winged.
Maybe the leaf wings help young trees get started, while the older
fruiting trees don’t need them anymore.
Like papayas, genips have male and female trees. Male
flowers producing pollen and female flowers producing seeds generally grow on
different genip trees. This is somewhat unusual - most types of trees with
sexual reproduction either have both male and female flowers on the same tree,
or flowers containing both male and female parts.
One advantage of having male and female flowers on different
trees is that it ensures cross-pollination and increases genetic diversity. But
what if there aren’t enough trees of the opposite sex in the neighborhood? I
worry about that when I look at my lonely young papaya tree, but the genips
don’t seem to be suffering from social isolation. Also bees are attracted to
their flowers and can travel pretty far as they search for sweet nectar.
Ordinarily genip trees flower between April and June, and
produce fruit in the summer. Some trees are fruiting now though. Most likely
that they were affected by last year’s drought and delayed their flowering
until after the November rains. So we got genips this winter.
