The Tropical Fruit Forum

Which tropical fruit trees are the most attractive as far as shape and structure and leaves?   But not necessarily large, spreading shade trees.  If you wanted to plant some attractive trees in your front yard with ornamental value but not those with the most tempting (to fruit thieves!) fruits, like mangoes and lychees, what would you choose?

Hmmmm...I seem to have heard that option recently!  Jeff, is there any reason why you wait for the tree to sprout and graft onto those instead of grafting the scions directly to the sawn off branch...much like we do with apples?  a sort of wedge graft where a "V" is notched out at the cut into the wood.  The scion is cut in a wedge and trimmed to fit.  It is then squeezed into the cut until it is very tight with cambiums matched. 

Here's a video demonstrating this technique.  It's very interesting.  I believe this is Axel from the Cloudforest forum.  He is a master grafter.

Quote from: ASaffron on February 26, 2012, 03:58:42 PM

Actually looking at my notes, the one that nurseries most carry, is not M cauliflora, its M. jaboticaba.

The two are almost indistinguishable to the untrained eye (and even to a trained eye!)

M. jaboticaba fruits are always sweet, never acid (where cauliflora has acid varieties like Ponhema)
Also caulifora is generally a shorter tree, with slightly larger leaf and fruit.

Good luck telling the difference!  Chances are, it's M. jaboticaba, sabarah...Hate to break it to you all, but the trees you have from PIN, Hopkins, and most other nurseries in USA, are mislabeled as M. cauliflora.

I'm sure I'll catch heat for saying this, but you can suck my "assu paulista" pulp.

That is very interesting. Pretty much every nursery has it listed as M. cauliflora. When do you think the original mislabeling happened?

Jay,
Most places only sell the M. caulifora. Some places have the M. vexator. I think everywhere you've probably only had the caulifora. I think sabara is the common variety of caulifora.  Now that people like Adam and Berto have the other species, maybe nurseries will start carrying them too. Excalibur said it has the coronata (well, he said he had one with giant fruit, so I assumed coronata but it may be something else). Oscar has made the hybrid seeds readily available now and maybe more people will start selling them.

If I was growing in my yard,  me being the anti-pruner, I would not prune.....being greedy and wanting the earliest possible sizing of the tree and therefore most rapid fruiting.  However, in your setting even I would do some tip pruning.  You shouldn't lose or delay fruiting too badly, if at all, as the blooms do not come from the ends of the branches terminal buds.

Harry

Just realized that your photo is of the bonsai. Anyway this is not a different cultivar of starapple. It is a different species: different leaves, different flowers, different shaped tree.
Never have seen a starapple bonsai here. We have a large japanese population in Hawaii and i go to their bonsai shows. Most common fruit bonsais here are jaboticaba and surinam cherry.
Oscar

Oscar, do you know if it can be grafted on caimito?

The folks that run Pine Island Nursery still have me steamed over the name change of the patented 'Young' mango.  Now that they have the facts, they refuse to call it by the correct name.  Talking about a marketing ploy!