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FairchildTropicalBotanicGardenDEMO

while leading to a quite ornamental effect. Male and female flowers are borne on separate plants. The flowers are small and lack petals, but often show large, dense and distinctive arrangements. The fruits are borne on large pineapple-like infructescences that can be quite colorful when ripe. Pandanus Ethnobotany Humans use Pandanus species in a number of ways. In Hawaii and the Pacific, the sweet fruits of Pandanus tectorius are eaten raw or cooked, as are the tips of stilt roots. A few other species also have edible fruits. Pandanus odorifer has edible seeds. Pandanus amaryllifolius, a small species often called simply ‘pandan,’ is used in Southeast Asian and Indian cooking. Its leaves are aromatic and lend a special flavor to rice and curry dishes. It is also used in desserts, often giving them a distinctive green color. An extract derived from Pandanus flowers is also used in Indian cooking. The leaves of P. tectorius and other species are used for weaving mats, baskets, fishing nets and ropes. With their distinctive forms and dramatic stilt roots, Pandanus are also widely planted as ornamentals in the tropics and subtropics. Pandanus utilis is frequently used as an ornamental in South Florida. Dr. David Fairchild and Pandanus Dr. David Fairchild was very interested in Pandanus. He especially came to appreciate them during his great Cheng Ho Expedition in 1939-1940, when he found several very promising species for ornamental and culinary use. He wrote about them in multiple publications: 34 THE TROPICAL Garden We had not gone more than a hundred yards when we came upon the most amazing and the most lovely pandan I had ever beheld. The pandans are allies of the palms and for that reason we were quite as anxious to get them. They are handsome objects in the landscape, especially when their large rough fruits have turned golden-yellow or scarlet. Here was one rising from the bank of the stream sixty feet in the air, with a smooth trunk from one and one half to two feet in diameter. It reminded us of a Royal palm, but had a crown of narrow strap-shaped leaves that were each twenty feet or so long. The fruits had all ripened and fallen to the ground, breaking up into the long, wedge-shaped nuts of which they are composed. We collected a lot of these and Marian had a time scraping all the juicy flesh off them. Young trees of this beautiful species are now growing on filled land in the Department of Agriculture Garden at Chapman Field, but they have not yet weathered one of the cold winters we sometimes have in Florida. ~”Garden Islands of the Great East” (The Heart of the Moluccas) With the pandanus we had better luck. Already, plants three or four feet high are growing in Florida gardens. As they are long-leafed and quick-growing, and bear decorative, brightred cluster-fruits they are sure to find their place in our ornamental horticulture. I was disgusted to find, however, that the plants of the species of pandan which Mr. Turno and Prof. Curran both had growing beside their doors, the leaves of which they put in the pot and boil with the rice to give it a fine flavor, died on the way home. ~”Garden Islands of the Great East” (Zamboanga and Mindanao) 1 2 3 4 1. Leaf scars show the spiral pattern of the original leaves. 2. Pandan cake in the Moluccas, Indonesia. 3. Infructescence and leaves of a small Pandanus species collected during Dr. David Fairchild’s 1939-1940 Cheng Ho expedition in the Far East. He hoped it would make a promising ornamental in South Florida. 4. Striking red-edged leaves of Pandanus vandermeeschii, planted in the Lowlands, shared with the Garden by the Waimea Valley Arboretum and Botanical Garden in Hawaii.


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