The Tropical Fruit Forum

Hi Heinrich,

That is a beautiful plant, thank you for sharing your experience with it. I have a Luma Chequen in the ground for the second year now and it has taken -8 last year in a series of 3 nights and 2 days in which the temperature didn't come above 0 Celsius. It didn't flower this year, but it did the first year, and the fruits are sweet and delicious, althoug the seeds are quite large for a beryy to eat, and the skin has some bitterness in it, so I bite them and suck out the pulp and spit out the seeds and skin. It also flowered in June and had fruits ripen in September

I had only one Luma Apiculata, bought here in the Netherlands. That plant flowered continuously and had, as you say always both fruits and flowers on it. It wasn't that cold hardy though, and I lost it two winters ago. The quality of the fruit was very bad, though. Mostly just skin and seeds and biterness. Arven pepiniere in France has made a selection for edibility, they sent me one plant last year, but it didn't survive the post...
http://www.arven-boutique.com/15-litre/451-luma-apiculata-arven-.html

I'll try to get another plant of them next spring, in the hope that it will survive.

Solko

Miguel.pt from Portugal has selected better larger fruited strains from both the red and yellow varieties. Try to get some seeds from him.

Congratulations, Kevin! That’s amazing! It’s a very very cool looking fruit! What was the taste like?

That doesn’t look like Blepharocalyx Salicifolius to me. I have some seedlings, also from Vitor, they have much smaller leaves. I’ll post a picture this week. The leaves do smell very nice, but I haven’t had it fruit yet.

I have no idea as to what your plant might be, but I would say definitely not Blepharocalyx Salicifolius.

Anyone else any suggestions?

Hi Heinrich,

Thank you for sharing your experience and adding some extra data points. Your story sort of confirms my expectations and I had a very similar thing happen to me, except that last year from 10 seeds that I planted in March three sprouted, but only in August, after the pot had been half forgotten and given up on and had dried out and been rewatered several times during the hot summer. I was quite surprised to see them sprout after such a long time, hot temperatures and these cycles of drying out and rehydrating, and so I guessed that they might be more temperate in their nature and benefit from some sort of stratification process. Could be cold stratification or could be by drying and rehydrating. The ones that are sprouting now over here have been in pots that I have allowed to dry out slightly before rewatering them again.
A third seedling is sprouting now.
Good luck with the seeds of this year. I won’t throw the ones away that don’t sprout this year, but keep them til next!

Vitiga, That is a very nice looking plant, how old is it?

I have collected seeds from a couple of different regions and in my limited experience there seem to be 3 general leaf types: long and hairy, large and small. But sweetness of the fruit seems to be a totally independent trait. In all three types there are people who claim to have a ‘sweet’ type. And that would make sense, in apples and peaches sweetness is also not correlated to leaf type or growth habit.
The only correlation I have seen so far is that the large leaves type with downy leaves is extremely vigorous and grows into a very large tree. The others are much easier to grow in pots.

So there is no way to tell what you have until you taste it!

The tree in your picture definitely looks like an Uvaia, I would classify it in the medium to small leaves-type, it probably doesn’t have any down or fuzz on the leaves, am I right? The fruits may turn out round or pear-shaped. You’ll just have to wait and see. Please report back when you have fruit!

Grapebush: I’ll send you the link

Solko

Hahaha, mine doesn’t do that...

Update:

Cassio, it seems that your own plant gives seedlings that flower just as fast as Heinrich’s plant.
We have an absolute winner in terms of precocity here: the Uvaia’s I got from Cassio just over a year ago. Two of the three surviving seedlings flowered within 15 months of planting the seeds. That is pretty incredible, also when you consider that they are the smallest variety of Uvaia that I have. The seedlings were pretty chlorotic and sensitive at the beginning and a few of them died, but that has probably more to do with the soil and conditions I am able to give them. I kept them out of direct sun. Nonetheless three healthy plants survived of that batch and I am pretty impressed. I hope they will set some fruit, but you have a unique mother plant there, Cassio!

I am posting an update here, same plants, one year later...


These are the different types I have



Giant Type - Velvety leaves


Large type - velvety leaves


Regular type - velvety leaves


Round type from HuertasUrbanas - hairless leaves


Dwarf type from Cassio - small hairless leaves and flowers after 15 months from seed!


Close up of the first flower on one plant


Close up of a cluster of three flowers on a second plant from Cassio


Hope you like the pictures!

My experience with E Dysenterica is that it is so hard to germinate and keep alive that it is hard to tell what kills it when it is young; city water, the sun, soil ph or other preferences like temperature and humidity - and it doesn't like small pots. As a seedling it is, like many Myrtaceae, very slow growing. Full trees seem to get quite large and obviously thrive in full sun. I've only seen large trees as singular trees - it doesn't show wether that tree grew up as a seedling in the shade of other bushes and then outgrew them.
As to the claim that it acts as a laxative, I have no firsthand experience eating the fruit, but it has the shortest possible shelf life - you have to eat it straight of the tree or it starts to ferment. That can probably account for it's nickname. There are a lot of better alternatives out there in order to wind up drunk on the toilet 

For E pyriformis I can confirm that there are varieties that are extremely slow growing - when young - and others that grow pretty fast, from barely 10 cm in the first year to around 60 cm.

Great review!
I'm really looking forward to grow this one. They are hard to come by in Europe and seed germination is not very predictable.

That looks great! And a beautiful Uvaia!

Thank you for clarifying that, Millet, that explains a lot of what is happening in my greenhouse this winter...

Marcos, thanks for the background information. It seems indeed that there are sweet and acid types of Uvaia, as well as the hybrids and the velvety types.... as you said, all very confusing. That is why I wanted to find out wether there are a lot of different flavors within all the Uvaia’s.


And Joe,
yes, the Eugenia genus is very mysterious, but that is also part of the fun of collecting them.
Do you think you can post some pictures of your Ubajai, so we can compare the leaf type.
I found the thread where I saw an Uvaia with the same type of leaves:
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=1963.0
It is the last picture in Adams post. He also says that his plant is very different from Ubajai, if you examine them next to each other. He said the fruit as good.
If you ever get any seeds of your plant, I would be interested!