 |
|
BATS,
CUSTARD APPLES and SWEETSOPS (Annona reticulata, A. squamosa) |
My mother was born in 1902, Georgetown, Grand Cayman, British West Indies. She grew up between hurricanes, watched schooners being built on the ironshore and ate fish, cassava and fruit. Our young family moved from Missippi to live on an island in Alaska. We children listened, unbelieving, to mother's longing accounts of filling up on freshly-picked custard apples, sweetsops, soursops, mangoes, breadfruit and avocadoes.
Annona cherimola, a close relative of A. reticulata and A. squamosa
Photograph courtesy of Forest & Kim Starr (USGS)
Julia Morton (1987) does not share my mother's high regard for Annona reticulata, the custard apple. She says that it "is generally rated as the mediocre or 'ugly duckling' species among the prominent members of this genus."
Usher describes A. reticulata as a "delicious" fruit and cites references to the fruit from 1814 and 1859 whose authors use the terms "much esteemed" and "highly prized".
Indeed, Julia Morton's description of the fruit's flesh sounds enticing; "There is a thick, cream-white layer of custardlike, somewhat granular flesh beneath the skin surrounding the concolorous moderately juicy segments in many of which there is a single, hard, dark-brown or black, glossy seed . . ."
Several species of bats like to eat custard apples. Fujita (1991) reports that the fruit is eaten and the seeds dispersed by the Marianas flying fox and Leschenault's rousette in the Old World Tropics. The New York Botanical Garden's Bat-Plant Database lists Annona reticulata as seed dispersed by an unspecified bat species.
Marianas flying fox
Annona reticulata may have first grown in the West Indies but today it grows in Central America, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Bahamas, southern Florida, Africa, India, Malaya, southeast Asia, the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii.
The custard apple may be disappointing as an item of food to some humans but the plant has other applauded uses. The seeds, leaves, young fruits, bark and sap from cut branches all have insecticidal effects. Obviously the tree has mounted impressive defenses to protect itself from predators who found it desirable to eat.
As a result of these protective qualities, decoctions and poultices can be made from various parts of the custard apple tree to combat lice and worms, treat ulcers, abcesses and boils, combat diarrhea and dysentery, reduce fever and treat toothache.
The tree's wood has been used to make yokes for oxen. A blue or black dye can be expressed from the leaves and a fiber can be teased from young twigs. Leather can be tanned with a liquid containing Annona reticulata leaves.
Annona squamosa, sugar apple (Morton)
or sweetsop (Usher) receives unqualified praise from Usher's sources: "
. . . an agreeable strawberry-like, piquant taste" (Unger, 1859) "
. . . delicious, having the odor of rose water and tasting like clotted cream
mixed with sugar." (Rhind, 1855) Morton (1987) says the fruit has "
. . . delightfully fragrant,juicy, sweet, delicious flesh." One of Usher's
sources, Drury (1858)is quoted as saying " . . . that the fruit is delicious
to taste and on occasions of famine in India has literally proved the staff
of life to the natives."
Fujita lists Annona squamosa as being seed dispersed by Leschenault's rousette and unknown species of Pteropus or flying foxes. The New York Botanic Garden's Bat-Plant Data Base lists Artibeus jamaicensis, the Jamaican fruit bat, and A. lituratus, the big fruit bat, as seed dispersers of A. squamosa.
Artibeus lituratus, big fruit bat
Photograph by David Liebman, Lubee Bat Conservancy
Again, the tree is well-protected chemically against predators. Human beings have employed those protective qualities to their advantage.
A powder from the pounded seeds and dried fruit is used as an insecticide and a fish poison and to make a paste for destroying head lice. Care is needed in that application as inadvertent introduction of the paste into the eyes can cause blindness.
The leaves can be incorporated into the nests of domestic fowls to destroy lice populations. More romantically, an essence of the leaves has some use in perfumes and reputedly has a woody-spicy aroma. The bark can be processed for a fibre which makes a useful cordage.
Medically some of the uses mirror the uses of A. reticulata's leaves, fruit, roots and bark. Ulcers and wounds may improve under a poultice of A. squamosa leaves. A decoction of leaves is used to reduce fever, treat colds, an upset stomach and cloudy urine. In a bath the same decoction relieves the pain of rheumatism. Diarrhea may be staunched by a tonic of bark and dysentery is treated with a decoction of the tree's roots.
A person falling into a faint or succumbing to an attack of hysteria may be revived or calmed by sniffing crushed A. squamosa leaves.
Pteropus spp. eating a custard apple
References:
Fujita, M.S. 1991. Flying Fox (Chiroptera:Pteropodidae) Pollination, Seed Dispersal, and Economic Importance: A Tabular Summary of Current Knowledge, Resource Publication No. 2, Bat Conservation International
Morton, Julia, Fruits of Warm Climates, 1987; http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton
New York Botanical Gardens Bat/Plant Databases http://www.nybg.org/botany/tlobova/mori/batsplants/database/dbase_main.htm
Usher, George, A Dictionary of Plants Used by Man, Constable and Company Ltd, 1974