Fruit salad Plant

The house plant you see in the garden centres,homes, restaurants, offices or hotels is commonly known as Fruit salad is the Monstera_deliciosa.

It grows best at a temperatures of 20 °C to 30 °C, like Singapore and requires a shady place with high humidity. Growth ceases below 10 °C and frost will kill it

It thrives very well outdoors in Auckland. I have two big bushes in my back garden. The leaves are giant size, averaging 24 inches by 18 inches.

I first heard of heard of them as a house plant in 1980. I saw a Chinese supermarket selling them. It reminded of the old days when I saw plenty of them growing in my grandfather's rubber garden in Sarawak.

It flowers around 3 years after it is planted in ideal conditions, and takes 1 year longer for the fruit to ripen. Flowering is rare when grown indoors. The plant can be transplanted by taking cuttings of a mature plant or by air layering.

My two bushes have more than twenty fruits but I am not game to eat them since it taste like jack fruit. I am allgeric to jck fruits. My brothers in Australia love them, taste like pineapple they tell me. Friends from South Africa have also eaten them.

May be when you go tramping in the jungles of Malaysia, you may find the giant fruits. Are you game to try?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monstera_deliciosa

The fruit may be ripened by cutting the fruit when the first scales begin to lift up and the fruit begins to exude a pungent odor, then wrapping in a paper bag and setting aside until the kernels begin popping off. The kernels are then brushed off; they fall away to
reveal the edible flesh underneath. The custard-like flesh is then cut away from the core and eaten. It has a delicious fruity taste similar to jackfruit and pineapple. Unlike some other exotic fruits such as the Durian, there is no acquired taste and people enjoy
it immediately. Eating the immature fruit which has not matured and still has the kernels firmly attached, exposes the throat to the oxalic acid and is dangerous.