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Fruit-Bearing Trees - Murungakkai

A fruit that satisfies a botanist's viewpoint and yet one that would not meet the understanding of a layman, as murungakkai can nor is consumed raw, like one does a mango or even a cashew fruit. You don't see a monkey or a squirrel trying to eat it raw. It must be cooked before it can be consumed and even then, as an enhancer of taste, not tasty on its own strength. It is best consumed when added to the world-renowned culinary preparations of Tamil homes, sambar and rasam. Even so, the innards of the fruit only, the rind totally discarded.

A native of north-west India, murungakkai, botanically known as Moringa oleifera alias M. Pterygosperma, it grows all over India and if space permits it, is a must in the kitchen gardens of Chennai's bungalows. One drawback with having a 'murungakkai maram' in the backyard is the huge population of caterpillars that thrive on the tree.

Look at the first name of the plant, Moringa. Don't you see that it is a latinised version of its Tamil name? It is an age-old practice adopted by botanists in naming the plants, latinising the local name. Mangifera for mango, Pongamia for poonga are other examples. All this is by the way.

The murunga tree is an unarmed, middle sized tree growing up to 15-25 feet height. It is a graceful tree with corky grey bark and easily breakable branches. This quality of branches is built into our local parlance in the shape of an admonition delivered to a sycophant who indulges in his art for gaining his own ends: "Aye, don't push me up a murunga tree." Its leaves are deciduous, 2-3 pinnate (which means that the main stalk of the leaf, rachis, is twice or thrice branched) with an odd leaflet at the tip of each branch. Large panicles of white flowers arise from the axils of the leaves. Both the leaves and flowers are short-lived.

The fruits are greenish, up to 45-cm-long, ribbed, pendulous and pod-like. Allowed to dry on the tree, they break up, releasing three-sided, winged seeds. The seeds contain an oil, called Ben-oil, which probably is the one that lends the taste, peculiar to murungakkai.

The leaves of murungakkai maram have an exceptional nutritional value: they contain aspartic acid, glutamic acid, glycine, threonine, alanine, valine, isolencine, histidine, lysine and methionine: a large array of amino acids! Incidentally, let me say that amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. This fact should be taken into account while drawing up programmers for fighting the protein hunger of our huge population of malnourished children.

(A week after this article was written, there was news that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa had ordered that a paste of murungakkai leaves be served along with the mid-day meal meant for school children. This would certainly fight the protein hunger of the children.)

The root and bark also are of medicinal value.

Conclusion:

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There are a few other fruit trees found in Chennai. But they are so few and so outlandish that we have to go on an expedition to locate them. For example, Averrhoa bilimbi (pulicha), Averrhoa carambola (kamarankai) and Eriobotrya japonica, sold as rose apple in the market, are to be seen in Chennai, but only when we go searching for them. I felt there is no point travelling that length. Ours is a blessed city, no matter its water scarcity, chaotic traffic and so on, for we've any number of common fruit trees. Let us be contented. There is nothing like contentment. On that happy note, we bid goodbye to this section on fruit-bearing trees of Chennai.