Plants

Weirdest Plants
Amazing Plant
Feeding Off Roots
Sunlight Not Necessary
Camel's Foot Climber
Living Houses
How Trees Cope with the Cold
Beautiful And Useful
Seed Power
Dreaded Flowers
A Strange Friendship
Lotus Lore
A Valley of flowers
The Delectable Durian
Red for Safety
Touch Me Not
Eco-Friendly Oil
Crazy Plant
The Civet fruit tree
The Toughest EucalyptusTree
Mutual Benefits
The Plant Clock
Desert Curiosity
In Search of Water
Keep Off!
Kicking Trees!
Velcro Plants!
The Quiver Tree
Helicopter-like Seeds
The New Beginning
Growing From A Bud
The Stranglers
Two-In-One
The Garden of Algae
Ivory Substitutes
Crying Trees
The Largest Seed
Most Expensive Spice
Passion Flowers
Daffodils Dance the Twist!
Dancing Leaves
The Tallest Flowering Tree
The Super Fruit
The White Dhup
Lighthouse of the Pampas
Exploding Leaves
The Titan Arum
Plant Guide
War Paint
The Dragon's Mouth

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The Delectable Durian

All fruits have a distinctive smell that helps advertise their presence to pollinators, but the durian tree takes this technique to extremes. Its ripe fruit can be smelled from half a kilometre away. Most strangers to the forest find the smell repulsive but locals find it invigorating and at once set out in search of the tree. They have to be quick because a large number of the forest’s denizens will also be following the smelly trail.
Orangutans, squirrels and hornbills collect the fruit while they are still hanging from the tree. Mouse deer, sun bears, and even tigers eat the fallen fruit. In season, the ground below the durian is littered with torn rinds and large numbers of black seeds that some animals have spat out during their meal.

From the tree’s point of view, these are the failures: they will germinate but will not grow to any great height as they are in the shade of the parent tree. The successes are those seeds that have been swallowed. These will remain undigested in the animal’s stomach and pass out in the normal manner, far away from the parent tree.
The durian is grown extensively in Southeast Asia especially in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, in which countries it is regarded as the king of fruit. It is believed to have originated in Java and Sumatra, but today Thailand is the largest producer. Connoisseurs of the fruit say that Thai durians, especially the luscious Monthong variety are the best in the world, an opinion not shared by Malaysians who claim that their durians, though smaller, have a richer flavour. Durians have been introduced into northern Australia, Hawaii, some Caribbean countries and parts of southern India.

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Last updated on :6/12/2006