The Tropical Fruit Forum

There's a popular free ID app that's mainly for forest trees of the north or something. The name doesn't give an indication of that restriction but it couldn't ID anything I have in Southern California. The database of that one is really limited.

Being able to ID tamarind is pretty impressive! Sounds like a good app.

Also got Physalis peruviana and Monstera deliciosa as its #1 guesses (tried M. deliciosa both by the stalk and leaves, both worked). It thought my Carica monoica was Carica papaya, but that's pretty close (nobody had uploaded C. monoica pictures). Got my acerola flowers top hit, although by leaves it was a fair ways down the list. My bananas were the third hit (I think the number one hit it guessed was some sort of Canna). Coffee leaves were fairly high on the list as well (but it couldn't identify it by its trunk; I added some pictures to hopefully help with that    ).  Got my Pachira aquatica first hit by leaves, but not my trunk (most trunks in the database were actually for P. glabra... I corrected that).  Annona muricata was something like 6th or 7th on its guess list. It strangely wasn't able to get my coconut by its trunk, despite how distinct coconut trunks are (added some pictures), but it had no trouble with the leaves. I actually had a plant I didn't know what it was and it helped me figure it out (Eugenia uniflora - thanks, Plantnet, I thought I had one of those around here somewhere!).  Can't remember what other plants I tried, but... I was very impressed, this is a super-difficult task it's doing.

Whenever I'm bored (for example, in the bathroom or waiting on something or whatnot) I also take part in rating other peoples' photos, to help the neural net.  I'd guess I've rated maybe 500 or so so far, it's kind of addictive    I've gotten some major seed orders in route right now (five different sellers) and I plan to take lots of good training pictures of them, every stage from seed to maturity.

Are you only interested in Rubus species in exchange?  I can certainly order species online (although with a collection as large as yours, you probably have most everything!). Or if you have interest in non-Rubus species, I could collect some of our local edible wild berries (mainly Vaccinium uliginosum (bláber / bog bilberry), Vaccinium myrtillus (aðalbláber / bilberry), Empetrum nigrum (krækiber / crowberry); there's a couple others (hrútaber / stone bramble, jarðarber / wild strawberries, skollaber / dwarf cornel), but they're not common). And some Ribes species, but they're only semi-wild. And ever common rowan berries, but they're not great, even when processed right    Everyone's favourites are usually the bláber and krækiber species.  The bláber species might be hard to find this time of year, but there's probably a few hanging onto plants. Crowberries should be abundant.

Hmm, now that I think of it... hrútaber / stone bramble is a Rubus. R. saxatilis. But I doubt I could find any this time of year.  I always think of them as kind of insignificant, I've never found a lot of berries in one location.  But they'd probably do better in cultivation than the wild.

Is the size difference based on what tree they came from, or do you get a mix of sizes from a given tree?

I'd be personally tempted to focus on the small seeds, on the assumption that you'd get a better flesh to seed ratio (given that that's a common complaint about marula).

Hmm, guess this is a "no" for my climate:

https://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/goldengategardener/article/San-Francisco-climate-not-the-best-for-pawpaw-3178485.php

"To bear sweet fruit, pawpaw requires at least moderate summer heat. As with many fruits, this is calculated in heat units, the number of hours above a certain base - in the case of pawpaw, 50 degrees. Pawpaw needs 2,200 heat units while it is developing fruit. ... San Francisco ... is about 1,550 heat units."

While leaf scorch isn't something I get exposed to in my environment (so I can't comment on that possibility), if they occurred on my plants, I'd suspect fertilizer burn.  Don't know if that's a possibility in your case.

Well, if you're adding in non-caffeinated Ilex species then you can't forget Ilex kaushue, aka large-leaved kudingcha (I. latifolia sometimes used interchangeably).  Very interesting chemical profile with it too 

Is vegetative propagation preferable for all Ilex species?  I know it's the most common approach  with I. paraguariensis, but that seeds are occasionally used as well.  I ask because live plants are a hundred times more difficult to get here (unless they come from Europe) than seeds.

Has anyone else here tried out the Plantnet smartphone app? I'm loving this thing! It uses a neural net to try to identify plants from images of the leaves, stems, flowers, fruit, whatever.  Sometimes it's unsuccessful, as you'd expect (that's an incredibly hard challenge), but it's successful more often than I'd expect, and I've had a number of times where the plant in question has been the first guess (for example, it got my tamarind right away).   And every picture that you take and contribute to the app helps teach the app to recognize such images in the future. Also, while I expected the results to be biased towards common temperate plans (because I'd expect the user base to be biased toward that), instead i most commonly guesses (even when wrong) tropical fruiting plants.  You can also narrow down the selection by family or genus.

It's fun even if you don't have any unknown plants, but if you ever get into one of those situations where you have some seedling mixup and you're not sure what it is, definitely give it a try. 

The standard solution to draining swamps is... drains.  Trench, gravel filled, with a perforated PVC pipe at the bottom.   



If you go this route, don't be silly... rent a trencher rather than digging by hand.  Also, might not be a bad idea to coat the pipe in copper hydroxide paint, if you can be bothered to, to discourage roots from growing into it.

I can't even imagine that, given how sweet jackfruit already is, and how low acid (hence the lime I guess!). Come to think of it, I've never had ripe jackfruit cooked, only unripe. Guess I'll have to try it - got a recipe? 

My latest obsession is baobab milkshakes. OMG, love those things.

I've always hated all kind of papaya bought in the store.
At the best they were tasting like a BAD MELON (that i don't like)

I think that's a great description of store papaya. They look like they should taste like a mango or something. Instead they taste like a cheap Chinese knock-off of a canteloupe. And dehydrating them makes them taste like a cheap knockoff of a summer squash.

Which soil pH meter did you get KarenRei? Been looking to get one myself.

Bluelab.  Not cheap, but based on my experience so far, 100% worth it.  You'll need a meter with soil probe, and a bottle of storage solution, pH 4 calibration solution, and pH 7 calibration solution.  Just keep the storage cap filled up to the line, and brush the probe tip with a toothbrush when you're done for the day before you cap it.  I had to consult their tech support at one point (long story short, I wasn't brushing the probe tip    ), and got a quick response, and they even offered to send me a replacement probe at no cost if their advice didn't work.   It of course did work.    The probe holds calibration well (I periodically test with calibration solution just to make sure - there's virtually no drift) and gets consistent readings within a given pot.

My first time around testing all of my pots, there were some plants whose readings got a real "Holy heck, no wonder I've been getting those symptoms!" reaction out of me    I had two pots test in with a pH under 4!  I mean, fine if you're growing rooibos, but otherwise...    (that was BTW the result of me acidifying the soil based on bad readings from a junk pH meter  :Þ  )

I just wish it was this easy to test for specific nutrients    Over the years I've come to realize a risk to growing plants in pots that never go outside: nutrient accumulation.  Plants use nutrients unevenly, and if the soil never gets washed through, you can have some build up to dangerous levels (yes, this has killed plants for me    ).  I now make it a policy to regularly "wash through" the soil in my pots - akin to a person growing plants hydroponically changing out their solution at regular intervals. This isn't something that would ever affect people growing plants outside since rains regularly wash through pots.

You could booby trap some random fruit, just making sure that you know which ones they are.    I mean, a really evil person could literally poison them, but you could always go with something more mild, like a healthy injection of capsaicin oil