Breadfruit requires wet, lowland tropic habitats. It has been cultivated since prehistoric times and introduced around the world since the late 1700s. Breadfruit has hundreds of named and unnamed varieties.

Breadfruit are monoecious, staminate (male) and carpellate (female) flowers are borne in inflorescences on the same plant. The male inflorescences appear first, the female inflorescences slightly later. The flowers are arranged tightly along the peduncle, the stem of the inflorescence.

Breadfruit is in the Moraceae, the mulberry family. Like other members of the family, the fruit is a syncarp or aggregate, composed of the fused fruits from the female flowers along the peduncle. When a breadfruit is cut open, the core is visible. This is the remainder of the peduncle of the inflorescence. There are two main types of breadfruit; those cultivars with seeds and those that are seedless.

In the 'seedless' varieties, the fruit is formed parthenocarpically; the flowers do not need pollination to set fruit. Interestingly, pollination stimulates the parthenocarpy. A few flowers may set seeds, but the rest of the flowers will 'abort' the seeds and produce larger individual fruits instead. Larger individual fruits fuse into a larger breadfruit.