Pouteria lucuma

[Roman]

Pecan Pie variety came from Papaya Tree Nursery originally and the story is that David Silber who started nursery got into Lucuma and contacted a professor of Ag in Peru and he sent David scion wood of many varieties to try out in Ca. I think "Pecan Pie' was one of the better varieties that he propagated. Another person who introduced Lucuma to Ca. was Alfredo Chiri a member of Orange County Chapter CRFG.
https://ocfruit.com/Lucuma.php

Thank you for sharing, Scott! Interesting regarding "Pecan Pie", I wonder what the original name of it was back in Peru?

I checked the Papaya Tree Nursery website and see that Alex has "La Paz", "Kona", "Inca Gold", and "La Molina 4" listed in their plant catalog. Alastair, maybe if you don't mind a bit of a road trip down to Granada Hills from Sebastopol you could buy either some grafted trees or scionwood from the Silbers?

I love pouteria species (I adore canistel fruit and actually love them the most - is that weird? I know a lot of the forum members despise canistel fruit...), so I'm honestly tempted to go down there myself once I get some vacation time in February or March.

Also, here's the link to the detailed write-up I had read regarding lucuma. Not sure if this is redundant to the more knowledgeable members here, but I thought it had some cool, useful nuggets of info -- https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/10.1079/cabicompendium.43724

[Bush2Beach]

Pecan Pie and Inca Gold are in Nor Cal , 25 gallon grafted tree's sold with flowers/fruit but the fruit has yet to hold in nor cal.

Call before you haul and make sure they have or want to sell any grafted Kona , La Paz or La Molina 4.
 

[Roman]

Pecan Pie and Inca Gold are in Nor Cal , 25 gallon grafted tree's sold with flowers/fruit but the fruit has yet to hold in nor cal.

Call before you haul and make sure they have or want to sell any grafted Kona , La Paz or La Molina 4.

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I only knew of the one "Pecan Pie" that Wildlands has and had no idea that there were already "Inca Gold" trees in Nor Cal as well.

And you're right, thanks for the head's up, I got a little too excited as an overzealous noobie... it'd be the smart thing to do to call ahead and ask if they actually have any of those bad boys in stock in the first place before making an appointment to visit. Hopefully they do have 'em and are willing to part with some smaller specimens so I can score some 1 gal or 3 gal grafted trees when my pops and I are on our way back up from Diamond Bar (a 25 gallon tree is definitely not gonna fit in our Honda Accord and I doubt he'd want to transport one "Griswold family"-style back up to Davis LOL).

Any of my fellow Nor Cal folks see Marta Matvienko's post on her blog from June 2023 about her experience growing lucuma and other pouteria over in her/my neck of the woods? We're both located in Davis. Here's a link: https://fruitsandgardening.blogspot.com/2023/06/pouteria-species-in-open-ground-in.html

Interestingly enough, one of the seedlings I bought from Wildlands has really tight node spacing and looks like it's going to have a compact growth habit, while the other seedling is shooting straight up like a rocket and is super vigorous (and lanky), similar to what Marta mentions about the two different "biotypes" of lucuma she's growing. I can try to take some pictures of mine and share later.

Marta mentioned that her lucuma trees have begun flowering, as well as her seedling canistel. Kind of off-topic, but I've been growing a grafted "Bruce" canistel that I got from Champa last year and it also flowered profusely and even set a fruit last summer while it was scorching hot in Davis (the fruitlet is still hanging on last I checked). We've already gone through two nightly lows at 30°, four at 32°, one at 34°, and four at 36°. There can be some pretty cold wind gusts at my location as well, so I'm pretty impressed that little thing is still hanging on. I also have a couple green sapote seedlings from Wildands sitting out in the open with the lucuma seedlings and they're doing okay so far (not doing as well as the lucuma seedlings, though). Cool stuff.

[FigoVelo]

Thanks for the good reading, Roman. I noticed in the article below that the authors describe successful rooting of cuttings using a blend of material including Styrofoam shavings. That's a material that ain't coming into my garden!

https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/10.1079/cabicompendium.43724

As some may know from my other posts, I am modifying some heavy soil, mostly for avocados, but I wonder if lucumas (and cherimoyas for that matter) require similarly elevated planting arrangement and loose, well-drained soil. Does anyone know about that? Should I build up some mounds for my Pouterias? With all the trouble we take with these plants, it would be a shame to mess it up with bad planting.

Roman, please PM me if you want to discuss purchasing some plants from SoCal. I'm interested. Maybe we could pool resources/time/etc for a bulk buy.

[Roman]

Thanks for the good reading, Roman. I noticed in the article below that the authors describe successful rooting of cuttings using a blend of material including Styrofoam shavings. That's a material that ain't coming into my garden!

https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/10.1079/cabicompendium.43724

As some may know from my other posts, I am modifying some heavy soil, mostly for avocados, but I wonder if lucumas (and cherimoyas for that matter) require similarly elevated planting arrangement and loose, well-drained soil. Does anyone know about that? Should I build up some mounds for my Pouterias? With all the trouble we take with these plants, it would be a shame to mess it up with bad planting.

Roman, please PM me if you want to discuss purchasing some plants from SoCal. I'm interested. Maybe we could pool resources/time/etc for a bulk buy.

Heya, Alastair

You bet, and I sent you a PM.

I totally agree with you on the Styrofoam - I like to try and grow my plants as naturally as possible. Other than the Styrofoam possibly being much cheaper and readily available to them, I wonder why they didn't just use perlite or pumice at a similar particle size to the Styrofoam shavings in the substrate mix that they used?

Here's a link to some more interesting reading material, this one is about micrografting lucuma: https://eeb.lu.lv/EEB/201712/EEB_XV_Cordova-Risco.pdf

And here's a link to a more basic-but-fun little writeup from our friends down under about their experiences with growing lucuma: https://www.rarefruitclub.org.au/Lucuma.htm

The Aussies mention that they don't have any named cultivars over there, but that they've made attempts at selecting some improved varieties. It appears that their attempts haven't yet yielded any noticeably superior cultivars that are worth propagating for them, unfortunately (or at least not yet as of whenever that article was written). Daley's only carries grafted "Kona" along with a no-name cultivar that they sell grafted trees of, so the Aussies must still be working on it.

That photo of the bisected lucuma fruit that's in the WA Rare Fruit Club's article looks pretty dang appetizing, though. I bet whoever the Aussie is that grew the chance seedling where that fruit came from is one chuffed bloke, that fruit looks like a real "rippa", as they say down unda!



Especially when you compare it to the "Montero" type of lucuma fruit that Marta got from the San Diego botanical garden - which kind of looks... I'll leave the rest up to your imagination LOL.

[FigoVelo]

Yeah, why does that San Diego lucuma look like a rotten avocado?

[Bush2Beach]

Interesting that Aussie Lucuma is pointed like some Canistel, I've only seen round forms.

That so cal Lucuma looks nasty, at least there's a seed to plant.

[K-Rimes]

Visited the two large lucuma trees in SB and one was fruiting heavy, with good development. The other tree of the two, which is about 50% bigger than the other, is just about to flower.





Other tree about to flower

[nattyfroootz]

siiiiick. Would love scion whenever you clip some up!

[sc4001992]

I went to a CRFG member's house to pick up my Marcus Pumpkin cuttings and he has 3 large lucuma trees. At least one had fruits, the trees are tall (over 20 ft) so its hard to see what the fruits look like. Maybe when I go back there I will get up on the 10ft ladder and try to get a photo of the fruit to show.

Anyone know how easy it is to graft the tree to a seedling?

I might go over to Alex's place and get a scion wood from him if he has the moist variety that you guys like. If you know which variety is the best tasting let me know and I might check with Alex. I'm not really into lucuma, just checking for Aastair really.

The person who lives here in Fullerton said I can take a few cuttings since we are trading right now.

When I looked up and saw his fruit on this large tree, it seemed to be the pointy tip fruit. Like the first one in the photo above, not the SD fruit.

[Reedo]

I went to a CRFG member's house to pick up my Marcus Pumpkin cuttings and he has 3 large lucuma trees. At least one had fruits, the trees are tall (over 20 ft) so its hard to see what the fruits look like. Maybe when I go back there I will get up on the 10ft ladder and try to get a photo of the fruit to show.

Anyone know how easy it is to graft the tree to a seedling?

I might go over to Alex's place and get a scion wood from him if he has the moist variety that you guys like. If you know which variety is the best tasting let me know and I might check with Alex. I'm not really into lucuma, just checking for Aastair really.

The person who lives here in Fullerton said I can take a few cuttings since we are trading right now.

When I looked up and saw his fruit on this large tree, it seemed to be the pointy tip fruit. Like the first one in the photo above, not the SD fruit.

They seem pretty easy to graft. Maybe similar to citrus or avocado. I had 3/3 succeed a couple years ago in my passive greenhouse. I haven't grafted any in ground yet. Nate at Wildlands did a bunch last year, so he might have better info.

[sc4001992]

Sounds good, now I just need to get a large enough rootstock to graft some good ones.

[ScottR]

Reedo, what time of year did you get successful grafts on Lucuma?

[FigoVelo]

Kaz, I suspect in your climate you could use mamey or Canistel as rootstock. But don’t quote me on that.

[sc4001992]

I do have a few seedling Canistel that is large enough to graft onto.

[MarktLee]

I have plenty of Lucuma rootstock and looking for scions of the named varieties. If any one has some available and the scions are ready to bud I'd be interested.

I'm down in San Diego and the one at the botanical garden is just too dryer me.

Thanks,

Mark