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Noni Fruit Cheese Tree Morinda Citrifolia Seeds
Packet of 20+ freshly harvested tropical seeds!
This Aussie native has a real reputation for being hard to grow.
Most folks(including me) that have had trouble germinating them just gave up far too soon, or just didn’t understand how this fella works.
These are not lettuce, and germination can take up to 2 years, especially with really fresh seeds like these ones.
The reason for the delay is that they were designed by nature to float over the ocean and land on beaches far away, to help spread the species.
Each seeds had a small air bubble in it and this must be punctured to allow water to penetrate the kernel.
Only at that point can germination begin.
So yeah, those folks float testing the seeds or suggesting they are all duds after just a few weeks of storage just don’t understand this particular species.
Now like I say, planted as is, they can take anything from 1month to 2 years to germinate.
BUT, if you want to speed it up, just do like I did in the picture.
Cutting the very tip off the seeds with a pair of nail clippers speeds up and standardizes germination.
Now it will kill a couple from fungal infection, and a few will also not quite be scarified enough to kick into gear yet, but the vast majority will be.
Where I don’t normally bother with scarification of other species, I highly recommend you do it with this guy.
For me an average pack of clipped seeds gives ~12 healthy seedlings after ~6weeks with a few more coming up over the next couple months if kept at a temperature of above 25c.
Being tropicals they MUST be kept warm during germination or the seeds will just sit dormant, or they may even just rot.
Once they are mature they can handle temperatures down to ~5Celcius, but frost WILL reliably kill them, and warm climates are definitely preferable for these guys.
The seeds are edible roasted, but it isn’t really great.
They taste a lot like a sunflower seed but ~30% husk.
The fruit is edible fresh and ripe and you can tell it’s ripe because it goes opaque white and stinks of cheese.
It’s pretty funky, and not for everyone, but I do enjoy them now that I understand they are not a sweet melon or strawberry, and the flavour is savoury, not sweet.
Add a bit of salt, hook in, crunch them up, it’s pretty good if you have the right mindset.
If you’re not ready for it I do admit they are pretty “unsettling”, and for this reason many folks only eat them once…
Health wise they are amazing.
Well, at least the millions of folks selling them powdered, dried or pills or capsules tell me.
They “cure cancer, fight diabetes, make you stronger, faster and if you slap it on your skin it is guaranteed to make sexier than ever before in just 30days!!!”
All you need to do is give them your is a credit card. lol.
While I don’t put much stock in those unrealistic, outlandish and in many case straight up false claims, I do know that they have a heap of different phytochemicals, polysaccharides, flavonoids, iridoids, fatty acids, scopoletin, catechin, beta-sitosterol, damnacanthal, and alkaloids.
There is a long history of use in Polynesian, Indian and Chinese culture going back ~2000years.
The leaves make a decent leaf vegetable especially in curries.
The green fruit can be juiced and at the immature stage it doesn’t have the funky cheese flavour the ripe fruit has.
It is also commonly sliced thinly and dried like fruit jerky at this stage, being sold either as a food or as a health supplement.
It’s really productive starting to throw it’s first fruit in less than 2 years, and it pumps out four to eight kilos every month from then onwards all year round in the tropics.
Due to its seed dispersal method it is found everywhere tropical and warm, and it’s known by hundreds of different names.
Here are a few.
Great morinda, Indian mulberry, beach mulberry, cheese fruit, vomit fruit, ach, achi, anino, apatot, aspirin of the ancient, asprin tree, awl tree, awltree, bai-yo, ba ji tian, beach mulberry, bengkudu, bo-aal, bois douleur, brimstone tree, canary wood, canarywood, caribe te, cheese fruit, dilo-k, dog dumpling, eagugu, east indian mulberry, forbidden fruit, grand morinda, hag apple, hai ba ji, hawaiian noni, headache tree, hog apple, ice leaf, jus de noni, kumudu, kura, luoling, mengkoedoe, mengkudu, menkoedoe, minamaram, mora de la india, morinda, morinda citrifolia, mulberry, mure indienne, nhau, nho, nhor, noko, nona, noni, noni juice, nono, nonu, nui, nuna, nunaakai, oko, pace, pain killer, painkiller tree, pain tree, patje, pau-azeitona, pemii, prey, riro, rotten cheese fruit, rra, ruibarbo, ruibarbo caribe, starvation fruit, tahitian noni juice, te non, the tree for headaches, thom, ura, wild pine, wu ning, yeiawa harachan, yo, or yor.
I have never used it for anything except food, and I have no idea about how or if it is actually an effective treatment for anything.
But I can tell you folks suggest it is perfect for everything below.
All of which is interesting, none of which I recommend in any way shape or form.
Noni has traditionally been used for colds, flu, diabetes, anxiety, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety, pain, headache, fever, bacterial infections, cough, diarrhea, stomach ailments, sore eyes, styes, conjunctivitis, ocular inflammation, asthma, wounds, broken bones, mouth and throat infections, tuberculosis, worms, diarrhea, fever, vomiting, eye ailments, arthritis, depression, seizures, fungal infections, viruses, cancer, burns, boils, pleurisy, inflamed gums, arthritic pain, hemorrhage, IBS, gout and insanity.
Some studies have also shown noni concentrate reduced pain on a level comparable to more common drugs like tramadol and hydrocortisone giving it potential in the treatment of arthritis and joint pain, and it is showing promise as a treatment for addiction and detox in a few different US studies.
But it’s important to note that the “headache plant” bit isn’t just because small amounts help some folks with the pain of headache.
Just like asprin, it actually reliably causes headache if you eat it in large doses.
If you sit down and eat a bucket of fruit you will get a massive throbbing headache, definitely, and trust me, it is not a lot of fun at all so keep that in mind.
Like anything, sensible moderation is key…
Wild harvested(and sometimes home grown) by me and the Mrs, no chems, no nasties, no problems!
