A short tour into history

For many millennia, a drink of the forest fruit of noni has been used in Polynesia as a helpful home product. ‘Queen of plants’, as locals call it.

The modern history of the noni fruit is remindful of ‘Ugly Duckling’ fairy tale. The juice tastes like ripened cheese, in some areas of the islands its strong smell persists in the air. In the past, most locals used the drink only in special circumstances. Fruitful noni shrubs yield up to 12 crops a year.

Once in 1993, a local told two American food industry specialists a Polynesian legend about the noni fruit. With much distrust, they still decided to try the juice, but in a few days they discovered that their general state of health had improved notably. They came up with the idea to produce the juice on an industrial scale.

Three years after the juice began to sell in America, it became hugely popular.

The fruit popular with Polynesians, in its turn, has become the national pride: noni drink has become the number one export product, and its previously unused properties have made it possible to develop the industry and create thousands of jobs. And the Ugly Duckling turned into a Beautiful Swan!

Research by a number of independent American universities has given the following results: noni juice is one of the significant discoveries of the last decades made in the area of natural nutrition.

Two thousand years ago the plant was only known in Polynesia, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Vietnam. On Tahiti, the plant grows in nature only, it is not grown in artificial plantations.

A bitter fruit from the southern part of the Pacific Ocean

For the indigenous people of the Hawaiian islands, Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa or the Fiji and Cook islands, and later for India, Asia Minor, China, New Zealand and Australia, it has been an irreplaceable wholesome plant, one of the most common and most frequently used tropical plants in this region. Seeds of this plant spread across oceans and settled thousands of years ago in all tropical ecosystems.

Family

Morinda belongs to the Rubiaceae family that are widespread all over the world but most often are found in the tropics. This family has some 7,000 species and some 500 subspecies. The most well-known plants of this family are the coffee shrub and the cinchona. Related plants that have taken a strong position in our winter gardens are the coralberry with its orange fruits and the Chinese jasmine with its narcotic odour.

In Europe, there are much fewer plants of this family, which include sweet woodruff herbs and deciduous herbs. Deciduous herbs can be found at meadowsides and sweet woodruff in sparse woods.

Flowers and fruits

The Morinda Citrifolia is a shrubby evergreen, its size can vary from a small shrub to a tree 4.5 to 6 metres tall (some publications mention proud 8-metre trees). Its branches are hard and straight and are covered in shiny, dark-green oval leaves.

There are white, fragrant flowers. They have a funnel-shaped aureola with a pistil and a stamen coming out of it. Pollination occurs through insects and by wind. Flowers have a varying number of petals, some four, others five. In the process of development and ripening, fruits look like they have many small eyes. Polynesians call this stage ‘Noni eyes’. Healers use Morinda at this development stage.

A Morinda, like a fig or raspberry, grows not as a single whole but as separate parts brought together in a fruit.

Fruits and flowers in a Morinda are arranged in such a way that an outside observer believes that a flower is just after a fruit. In fact, there is kind of a flowerbed between a couple of leaves that looks like a flattened small person from space in which a fruit can be recognized.

A fruit usually has a size of an average potato, but may reach that of a football. Its quality doesn’t depend on its size. At every Morinda shrub, flowers and fruits at various ripening stages and of various sizes can be found at any time of the year. Every shrub yields up to a 50-kg crop every month.

A fruit’s colour can range from green to almost black. Local Polynesians identify fruits by a strong odour (and taste) characteristic of a ripe fruit.

Morinda Citrifolia is immune to diseases and parasites. Its flowers are also used as tea.

Ripe fruits are fleshy and gelatinous, taste rough or bitter and smell like ripened cheese. A crop of fruits can be harvested all year round and even from shrubs aged less than four years.

Roots and bark

Roots and bark are used in dye preparation. Polynesians dye their traditional clothes in yellow colours using root juice. And in India, they dye with it silk saris and use Morinda bark to dye fabric in red.

Morinda’s bark has a light brown or light grey colour, its wood has a light beige colour. Before synthetic dyes were introduced almost in all cultures, noni roots were used as a natural dye for clothing and other household items. But still, its helpful properties prevail over all others.

Very often Morinda grows near hardened lava flows, along sand deserts and even in sand itself. But most of all it prefers the soil of quiet and splendid valleys, growing along streams and rivers. During rainfalls, valleys are always flooded with water, which is very good for the plant. Morinda’s leaves here are shiny and huge. On trees receiving plenty of sun, very often big fruits ripen as well which are twice as big as those ripening in thick and dark tropical forests.

Leaves

Depending on a tree’s age, leaves can range from the nail of a thumb to a palm in size. One thing should be taken into account: for tea, yellowish leaves are used because it is believed that yellow has a stronger rejuvenating and helpful effect. Leaves are gathered at sunset and are often used in nutrition.

Seeds

Noni seeds look just like apple seeds, but they are bigger. They sprout for two months and grow only in a tropical climate. They can grow in our latitudes as well, on a window sill or in a greenhouse at a constant temperature of 25°C. And, of course, provided that the soil is well-fertilized, watered daily and sprayed. The best option is a glass greenhouse with a tropical climate.

Noni components

Any Tahitian Noni® product is based on one of the elements of a noni tree – fruits, leaves and seeds. Each of these has unique properties whose effect is well-balanced in a finished product.

Fruit. Contains antioxidants, supports the immune system and increases one’s stamina. One of the main ingredients of TAHITIAN NONI® juice and other products.

Leaves. Help to soothe irritated skin. Form part of Tahitian Noni® leaf whey and Tahitian Noni® leaf tea.

Seeds. Rich in linoleic acid, one of the essential oil acids helping to moisten skin. A source of priceless Tahitian Noni® seed oil.