Artocarpus integer (Thunb.) Merr.


Family: MORACEAE
Sub-Family: Not available
English Name: Champedak
Synonym: Artocarpus champeden (Lour.) Stokes
Common Name: Not available
Flowering & Fruiting Period: July - October
Distribution: Southeast Asia - Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia.
Habitat: A common, sub-canopy tree in secondary forests and locally abundant in primary lowland rainforest, often on wet hillsides in Thailand. Usually found at elevations up to 450 metres, occasionally to 1,200 metres.
Uses: Fruits are edible either raw or cooked. The pulp of the ripe fruit is golden-yellow, it is rather slimy and strongly odoriferous. The flavour is sweet, resembling durian and mango. he unripe fruit is used as a cooked vegetable or is added to soups. Ripe seeds - roasted or boiled and eaten as a delicacy. Young leaves - cooked and used as a vegetable. A fibre obtained from the bark can be used to make rope. A resin obtained from the tree is used as a varnishing material. The bark contains tannin. With alum, the extract of heartwood provides a yellow dye that is moderately fast on silk. This dye is used in colouring the saffron-coloured robes of Buddhists. The dark yellow to brown wood is strong and durable and is used for building construction, furniture and boats. The tree is a good fuel wood.
Key Characteristics: Evergreen monoecious tree, up to 33 m tall, seldom buttressed, bark grey-brown, bumps on trunk and main limbs where leafy twigs are produced which bear the fruits. Leaves obovate to elliptic, margin entire. Inflorescences solitary, axillary, cauliflorous or ramiflorous. Fruit a syncarp, cylindrical to almost globose, yellowish to brownish to orange-green.