(Picture taken by Gecko in a prominent cemetery on the outskirts of Hilo) This is not a wide angle lense view. The breadth of this tree is not exaggerated! And for the curious, yes - that is the Pacific behind the tree.
The magnificent Monkeypod, perhaps the most admired and widely cultivated trees throughout the tropics, forms a broad umbrella shaped canopy of feathery leaves. The massive trunk and branch structure of a mature Monkeypod reaches horizontally with an awe-inspiring grace and symmetry with astonishing structural integrity. It came as no surprise that it's wood can be as dense as the finest mahogany.
The Monkeypod has the capacity to provide its own nitrogenous fertilizer symbiotically through bacteria that live in nodules on their roots. The friendly bacteria chemically convert nitrogen gas from the air into soluble compounds that the plant can absorb and utilise. The Monkeypod effectively fertilizes itself.
Quite unlike the Banyan, the Monkeypod allows healthy grass to grow right up to its trunk. Abundantly produced nitrogen and the fact that the leaflets of the tree fold together at night and during rainy weather, allows the rain to fall through!
The Monkeypod is grown commercially producing seedpods with an edible pulp. When ripe, the pulp is sweet and sugary, with a flavour rather like licorice.
Needless to say, the wood of the Monkeypod is highly valued for furniture and boat building.
its seeds, which arrive in long pods, have been used in a limited way as emergency food. They are roasted, soaked to remove the seedcoat, then boiled or fried, or ground to a flour or starch. In Thailand, roasted seeds are ground and used as a substitute for coffee.
Its fruit can be used in fruit preserving and is recommended as a stabilizer in ice cream, mayonnaise and cheese and as an ingredient or agent in a number of pharmaceutical products.
In Malaysia, the wood ashes are employed in tanning and in de-hairing goatskins. Or, Gecko can recommend its use in conteracting an overdose of elephant dung and banyan root to the scalp.
Medicinal uses of the Monkeypod are uncountable. But lets briefly begin with the most interesting:
1. The pulp has been official in the British and American and most other pharmacopoeias and some 200,000 lbs (90,000 kg) of the shelled fruits have been annually imported into the United States for the drug trade.
2. Alone, or in combination with lime juice, honey, milk, dates, spices or camphor, the pod pulp is considered effective as a digestive, even for elephants.
3. In native practice, the pulp is applied on inflammations, is used in a gargle for sore throat and, mixed with salt, as a liniment for rheumatism. It is, further, administered to alleviate sunstroke and (seriously) alcoholic intoxication.
4. In Colombia, an ointment made of Monkeypod pulp, butter, and other ingredients is used to rid domestic animals of vermin.
5. An infusion of the roots is believed to have curative value an ingredient in prescriptions for leprosy.
There is a superstition that it is harmful to sleep or to tie a horse beneath the monkeypod, probably (seriously) because of the corrosive effect that fallen leaves have on fabrics in damp weather.
To certain Burmese, the tree represents the dwelling-place of the rain god and some hold the belief that the tree raises the temperature in its immediate vicinity.
In Nyasaland, Monkeypod bark soaked with corn is given to domestic fowl in the belief that, if they stray or are stolen, they will cause them to return home.
Mrs Gecko has been drinking and bathing regularly in Monkeypod bark juice and has never strayed from my side in 35 years of Marriage. She also has never had need to shave her legs either.
