Osage Orange " Monkey Brain "

This strange little ball grows in the Osage Orange tree. The Osage-

orange (Maclura pomifera) is a plant in the mulberry family Moraceae. It

is also known as Osage-apple, mock orange, hedge-apple, horse-apple,

hedge ball, bois d'arc, bodark (mainly in Oklahoma and Texas), bodart

(in northwest Louisiana) and bow wood. Common slang terms for it

include monkey brain, monkey ball..., monkey orange, and brain fruit

due to its brainlike appearance.

Remarkable!  This looks like a miniature tropical breadfruit.  

I lived in Micronesia for two years and there are trees that produce a fruit looking like this (only 18 inches to two feet long).  The natives cut off the green rind and shave the inside white material into long shreds which they pulverize with instruments that look rather like an enlarged morter and pestle.  The resulting paste looks like bread dough to westerners, hence the name, breadfruit.  They pack it into large lumps, wrap them in sturdy bananna leaves, tie each with plant fibers that look like string and stack huge amounts into underground storage pits.  These are allowed to ferment, much like sauerkraut, and with a similar odor.  The packages are by this time covered with red mold and the combination of the look of the mold and the stench got the better of me and I could not bring myself to even taste it. Even being in the same room with it induced a gag refllex.The Micronesians dip two fingers into the mess, sort of like eating Hawaiian Poi and stick their fingers into their mouths. smiling happily.

However the fresh breadfruit can be cooked any way that potatoes can and I experimented with breadfruit chips, breadfruit fries, baked breadfruit, breadfruit salad, etc.  Since potatoes were not know there, breadfruit substituted nicely.  Since the mature breadfruit tree can produce thousands of pounds of fruit, it is a staple among the people of those islands.

My son, who also was with me there, was age 4-6 and at 43 he still remembers breadfruit fondly.

Do you know if the item you photographed is edible?

Jerry