Forbidden Fruit of India

[marlin]

I just bought this for its heavenly scent, I hear the fruit deadly but haven't tried it yet to know for sure.
What I want to know is, what is it really called? I did a websearch and cant' find it with gardenia tree, tahitian ginger, etc. The flower sort of pinwheels and the scent is almost spicy.....mahalo and keep your noses open...

marlin

[jdirgo]

Sounds like what I've always heard called a "tahitian gardenia". I have one in my yard and it has the pinwheel type flowers and a spicy scent to it.

John Dirgo, R, ABR, e-PRO
Aloha Coast Realty, LLC
808-987-9243 cell
http://www.hawaiirealproperty.com

[missydog1]

hmm, I was told this name by someone who had a nursery business and really knows plants, attached to what I have bought as Indian Gardenia or Cinnamon Gardenia (from Garden Exchange). I had two of them in Hilo that fruited, and the scent was heavenly, but the flowers aren't pinwheels, they're tubular.

This shrub often grows like a "standard" but can look shrubby.

Pinwheel flower sounds like tiare, as John said, Tahitian Gardenia. ... which smells more like standard Gardenia than the Indian version.

Now I need to look this up.
ed to add, yes the pinwheel is gardenia taitensis or tiare.
I cannot find a gardenia listed as poisonous fruit.

But I do know the plant I'm thinking of is sold here as Indian Gardenia and has fruit, which i was told is poisonous. The flower is shaped like thunbergia, and there is a gardenia thunbergia, but it's from South Africa, not India ... color me confused.

The plants I'm talking about smell heavenly, I like them better than either tiare or gardenia augusta. They don't have the highly glossy leaves most gardenias do, and I'm not sure they are a true gardenia.

(but Garden Exchange generally does a very good job of labeling their plants, and they call it Indian Gardenia.



Edited by - KathyH on 09/15/2007 00:53:47

[Andy]

The plant you all are talking about is Tabernemontana pachysiphon...its' common name is Forbidden Fruit of India or something like that. It has very fragrant white pinwheel type flowers. To me it looks a bit like a Gardenia.

[marlin]

Mahalo All,
What a wonderment of names for this earthly delite. A gardenia by any name....so sweet.

Stay light,
Marlin

marlin

[marlin]

Follow up: There is a website
http://www.phytoextractum.com/
That has all manner of plants, extracts, oil, etc....given the other items on the website there may be more to the name Forbidden Fruit than it simply being poisenous????
Tabernaemontana Pachysiphon Leaf - 28 grams

Tabernaemontana is a genus of 100-110 flowering plants species in the family Apocynaceae, with a pan-tropical distribution. They are shrubs and small trees growing to 1-15 m tall. The leaves are evergreen, opposite, 3-25 cm long, with milky sap. The flowers are fragrant, white, 1-5 cm diameter.

The genus name Tabernaemontana is taken from the name of a 16th Century physician and herbalist, Jacob Theodore. He latinized his name to Tabernaemontanus.

We offer this material as a whole leaf, available in units of 1 oz. (Also offered as an extract.)

marlin

[missydog1]

Andy, I'm so glad you came up with the right name.

This is the exact plant I meant. The pinwheel flower is borne on a tubalar structure, and the unopened bud is tubular, whereas tiare and common gardenia flowers open out of plump buds.

I notice that these Forbidden Fruits typically look chlorotic in the soil here, much more so than gardenias.

I don't think it smells anything like a gardenia (tiare does).
It's closer to the fragrant variety of ixora.

At Garden Exchange they sell this as Indian Gardenia.
This linkhttp://toptropicals.com/cgi-bin/garden_catalog/cat.cgi?uid=Tabernaemontana_africana

nicknames it Samoan Gardenia.
Definitely not a gardenia, not even in the same botanical Family.

and yes, if you google it you find articles on the alkaloids and a discussion of opiate type properties ... but I would certainly hesitate to ingest any unless I knew a whole lot more about the toxic properties.