I wrote about Monstera deliciosa here, almost exactly three years ago. That post has attracted more comments than almost any other on Green Path, so when I enjoyed a monstera fruit yesterday I thought I should mention it to clear up the remaining vagueness in our collective knowledge, i.e., how long do the fruit take to ripen?
I said, “The fruit takes a very long time, perhaps as long as a year, to mature,” and the Agfacts brochure I linked to says “usually about 12 months after flowering.” That turns out to be absolutely correct, at least in our monsoonal climate: the fruit I ate yesterday formed as a flower during our last Wet (nominally Wet, anyway) season.
My photo shows the buds forming (we ended up with five flowers) at the end of the creeper’s stem. The rest of these fruit are now nearly ready to pick as well; I think they would begin to ripen as soon as I picked them but I will let them take their own time. Later stages of the flowers and fruit are illustrated on my earlier post.
Postscript, Feb 8: Two more of the fruit have ripened, as expected, and the plant has produced two new buds at its growing tip.