In 1989, we planted our first 5 acre lychee, longan and carambola grove, chosing those trees because of their similar nutritional requiremnts. Also interested in discovering a new variety of lychee, we found a farm in Austrailia, bought 18 air layers (6 different varieties, 3 of each variety), potted them up and hoped for the best. As things turned out, after a few years, most of those airlayers had survived and grew alongside hundreds of our Mauritius lychees, also in 3 gal. containers.
USDA would visit annually to check on those newly imported trees. Required by USDA to leave them in pots for a few years, we hoped to plant them out one day and see which varieties thrived and had the best fruiting characteristics. Hurricane Andrew changed those plans. The storm hit in August of 1992 and many of our 3 gal. pots were scattered and destroyed. Our home, built in the middle of the grove, was destroyed and our 5 year old Mauritius lychee grove looked like a parking lot. There was so much work to be done. We were sure the Australian lychee airlayers we potted were history.
While cleaning up we found lychee trees in pots lying underneath the huge pine trees that had fallen from the neighbor's yard. Amazingly, many of those 3 gal. pots had been spared destruction by the large branches that had fallen on top of them, sheltered them and protected them from strong winds and the sun's heat. With the surviving trees, we replanted our 5 acre lychee grove. Some of those potted trees we also sold to another grower who was replanting his grove at the time too.
Years passed and one day, during fruit season, while driving through that newly planted grove, plucking luscious pieces of fruit from the trees, we noticed one tree that seemed bigger than all the rest. We tasted the fruit and I remember how surprised we were to find that every piece of fruit had such a small seed and the fruit was exceptionally sweet. Chalking it up to some botanical phenomenon, we didn't think much much about it until the following year when we received a phone call from the same grower who bought some of those post hurricane trees. "Oddly enough," he told us "out of all the trees you sold me, two of the trees seemed very hearty, much bigger than the others, and every piece of fruit had such a small seed.....". Then it dawned on us, "He has two.... and we have one..... and that makes three. One of the six different varieties we had brought in from Australia must have been hearty enough to survive the storm.
Well, now the tree was out in the world and other growers wanted to know what the variety was. We couldn't be exactly sure, so we just called it a 'SweetHeart' lychee tree, because the fruit was large, heart shaped and very, very sweet.
In 2010 Florida Star Groves, Inc. was approved for a trademark by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The registered trademark is for the name SweetHeart Lychee and it's logo. Approved labels and tags can be purchased from Florida Star Groves, Inc. Call 786-255-2528.
http://www.sweetheartlychee.com/AboutUS.cfm
