Plant · P-524

Noni

Morinda citrifolia

Noni is a fast-fruiting evergreen tree grown mainly for a long medicinal record - it appears in Chinese medical literature going back to the Han dynasty - and for a fruit eaten unripe in sambals and curries or ripe raw and juiced, alongside young leaves that are cooked as a vegetable. Ripe fruit smells of rotting cheese, strongly enough that a fruiting tree near a door or a seating area is unpleasant, so it is best sited downwind of where people gather and picked before it drops. It floats and disperses by water, which is how it colonised shorelines across the Pacific, and it fruits almost year-round once established, from around the third year.