09 May 2012

Durian Flowers







Not many people get to tour a real plantation.  Even if you visit a durian farm to consume durian, not many will bring you on a tour.


Durian trees takes about 8 to 10 years to mature.  A young tree may be as short as about 3 meters, and the first branch can be less than half a meter from ground (as seen above).


Durian flowers are quite a pretty sight.  Flowers are in a bunch (is there a proper name?) as seen above but not all of them will mature into fruits (just like many other fruit trees).


Many 'bouquet' can blossom per branch.  On some branches, you can even see 50 durians growing on it.  Too many fruits per branch is not very safe as the weight may end up breaking the branch.

Thus, some durian plantation owners will have some of these young fruits cut off.  As you may observe in the 4th photo above, there are some thin stems/stalks where a young fruit may have fall off or maybe even cut off.  This helps prevent too many durians growing together.



There are a few possible reasons:
-  Reduce amount of fruit, improve on quality
-  Reduce weight of durians per branch, so it doesn't break.
-  Prevent too many fruits per bunch, so it doesn't pull the other down when one falls.

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