JoAnne Berkenstouk, age 8, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, for her question:

Is there really a bread tree?

Imagine picking a loaf of bread from a tall tree in your own backyard. Suppose that friendly tree also had a supply of threads for making cloth under its bark. And suppose, if you chopped it down, its sturdy wood could be used to make fine, hard furniture. Surely such an impossible tree belongs on the imaginary Big Rock Candy Mountain. Not at all. It really grows in this world and people call it the breadfruit tree.

The real, live breadfruit tree grows in rich, well drained soil where the climate is extra warm and moist. If you lived on a Pacific Island not far from the equator, you would be used to it. There the people can gather breadfruit instead of going to the store to buy loaves. Each fruit is a round ball about as big as your head. It has a rough, bumpy crust and the inside is stuffed with soft white starchy food. If you bake it or just dry it in the sun, the inside smells and tastes very much like freshly baked bread.     

Actually there are about 40 varieties of the breadfruit tree that bear their ripe fruit at different times of the year. So if several varieties grew in your back yard, you could gather a fresh breadfruit loaf whenever you wanted to make a sandwich. Actually, there is no need to worry about supplies, even if you have only two or three different trees. You can gather a load of almost ripe fruit and roast them slowly in a pit of hot ashes. Then you can eat them or store them for several months until your next breadfruit tree is ready to offer you a fresh supply of loaves.     

When it grows to its full height, the kindly tree stands about 40 feet tall. Its smooth trunk is bare until it reaches up about 20 feet or so, then it spreads out its wide, shady branches. It stays green all the year and some of its big shiny leaves are a foot long. When people want a new tree, they cut a smallish twig, set it in warm moist soil and pamper it until it grows roots of its own. But it will not be ready to give its friendly loaves for several years.     

The lucky people who live where the breadfruit tree grows depend on its starchy food, just as we depend on the starchy cereals in our loaves of bread. They watch the green little bumpy balls grow bigger. As a rule, they pick them as they begin to turn brown, which means they are almost ripe. Sometimes they set them out to dry in the sun. When they break open the crusty rind, they often mix the soft stuffing with coconut milk to make delicious pudding. Sometimes they cut the stuffing into this slices and toast them on hot stones.

Breadfruit trees also grow in the West Indies and some have been coaxed to grow in Florida. But for some reason, these breadfruits are not shipped to other states. It seems that we must either bake our own bread or buy loaves from the store    unless we move ourselves to a tropical island where the breadfruit tree grows.