Let me say, they are very tasty indeed. Best described as a mix of baobab and pineapple.<\/p>\n
“What?!?” You say? “Philodendrons are poisonous house plants and are most certainly neither edible nor tasty, you moron!”<\/p>\n
Not so fast. The common “cut-leaved philodendron” sold as a house plant, also called the “Swiss cheese plant” for the perforations in the large leaves of mature specimens, has the botanical name Monstera deliciosa.<\/em> That name is a clue.<\/p>\n All parts of the plant are in fact poisonous and highly irritating\u2026 with the exception of the fully ripe<\/em> fruit (unripe, even slightly unripe, fruit is poisonous). They’re also tropical and actually barely survive as a house plant, and need to thrive to bear flowers and fruit. That typically never happens unless they are planted outdoors, which would normally rule out Seattle as a place to ever get a fruit for one.<\/p>\n Enter the Volunteer Park Conservatory, which has a large mature one. Twenty-odd years ago, it was the first time I saw one ever in bloom. It’s still one of the few places I’ve ever seen flowers or fruits on one. Today I noticed one flower open, a bud or two, and lots of developing, unripe fruits. The latter got me thinking if anyone who worked at the Conservatory ever ate them.<\/p>\n And lo, there in the gift shop, sitting on a plate, was a ripe Monstera<\/em> fruit giving off a most appetizing fragrance. So I helped myself to a few small bits, and it certainly does deserve the deliciosa<\/em> moniker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let me say, they are very tasty indeed. Best described as a mix of baobab and pineapple. “What?!?” You say? “Philodendrons are poisonous house plants and are most certainly neither edible nor tasty, you moron!” Not so fast. The common “cut-leaved philodendron” sold as a house plant, also called the “Swiss cheese plant” for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-botany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}