The Tropical Fruit Forum

OK, this is very weird. Sugar apples/Annona squamosa do very well here, and in fact were once grown commercially in this area over 100 years ago, so the fact that they are growing from seed here is not that surprising. But the thing is, I threw these (very old and dry) seeds down only about 10 months ago. Frankly, I had so many that I scattered them pretty carelessly, did not bother to really cover them up with soil, threw them in a part of the yard that has mostly terrible soil and only dappled sunlight and is so covered in a neighbor's invasive Australian pine needles (not actually pine so unfortunately no acid benefit) that virtually nothing grows there, and have not watered them almost ever or done a single thing for them. A whole bunch of them grew anyway. This one seed I noticed from the beginning, as shooting up at a more rapid pace and with a stronger growth habit than the others.

Today I took a quick look around the yard - really checking on other new plants which have only recently been put in the ground - after we had an unusual 2 days of heavy rain here during what is normally the dry season. I happened to walk past these sugar apple seedlings, which were so haphazardly thrown that this one bigger one and a few others are growing in the middle of a path, rather than along the border where I try to keep all the plants so they're not a trip hazard and won't get trampled. But this thing seemed happy, so I never moved it. I figured when it gets too big for this small section at the side of the house, I'll transplant it into a permanent location. I noticed that many of the sugar apple seedlings seemed to be sprouting new leaves as a reaction to the rain, so I took a closer look at the largest one to see the leaves. And then I saw... flowers??

I have read that sugar apples can fruit somewhere between 2-4 years old. This thing is only 10 months old, and is only about 1.5ft tall. Note, the other seedlings I planted on exactly the same day are all much smaller, many still about 6 inches tall. For those interested in growing sugar apple (which is supposed to be an easy plant by tropical standards and is capable of fruiting in a container) all of my seedlings that receive the least light have grown the fastest. And now this biggest one, in a deeper shade patch because it's right under a tree, has flowers on it.

Now, I'm not expecting these flowers to actually turn into viable fruit that will hold on (although I will certainly update if they do!), but it strikes me as odd that I have a different sugar apple in another part of the yard that is probably 2.5 years old and is 4ft tall, and even that has no flowers on it. But this tiny thing, at not even 1 year old, is pushing flowers. Wha....? ? ?

I know people on these forums are very big on visual proof, so here you go:

These are some of the other seedlings of the same age, 10 mos, around 6 inches tall because they've been totally neglected - and note, all of these including the flowering one got an attack of spider mite which they thankfully survived thanks to Neem Oil, so they all look a little haggard and could probably use additional nutrition on top of it - and in looking at these photos I think they also got the Noni's whitefly so I'll have to spray them yet again - these are some hardy little plants!


And here's the flowering one at 10 mos:


And this is the same plant so you can see perspective, it is about 1.5ft tall (and growing right next to a palm that accidentally seeded itself right next to it at around the same time from a mother palm overhead - I did not really intend for either of these plants to be there, since this is the middle of a pathway):




So I don't know if others have experienced this, but it strikes me as very odd that something so tiny would put out flowers, when it is not even big enough to hold a fruit without falling to the ground. I may need to actually start caring for it a little more if it's going to produce fruit faster than any of my other sugar apples - even one that is a good year and a half older than this one is! I just happened to have like a billion seeds from some fruit that I ate and so I tossed them in a part of the yard that I could spare in case any of them happened to come up. Incidentally, the same thing happened with lychee nuts, although they are still about 6 inches tall despite being about 1.5 years old, and no, none of them have put out flowers as yet! But they too were happy enough to grow in this terrible part of the yard with basically no care whatsoever. This one sugar apple seedling, however, appears to be special.

OMFG I have been waiting for eons for my ever first banana harvest, and this thing has had fruit on it for quite a few months now! They are plumping out, so I guess I'm getting close?...

Somebody who has experience with this, please tell me when I can finally cut these things down to eat them! I have read varying reports online - that I should wait until they turn yellowish, that I should cut them down green and counter ripen, that I can start cutting them green but only one hand at a time so I can space out my eating of them...?

[For reference for those who are new to Dwarf Namwah, here's a shot from January - NOT what they currently look like:
   ]

And here's one of it now:


Do you think they need to get a little plumper first? I'm not really sure how they should look when done. I read somewhere that if they produce fruit in the winter they are done for and won't be any good, but they seem to have done pretty well to me (granted I haven't tasted one yet).

Thoughts?

And when I do cut them all down, do I cut the stalk with a machete to the base and let the 2 pups grow around it?

I am so impatient to taste my first ever home-grown banana already!

So today I ate my first ever mulberry. I got this tree just a few weeks ago at a local nursery for free, because it was infested with the spider mite that is racing through and killing things all over the Keys. Luckily, I have already fought a terrible battle in my yard with this same infestation, and appear to have learned how to win with a mix of Neem and Rosemary oil/organic insecticidal soap.










So when I brought the tree home, it was a sad stick with no leaves on it, and I wasn't sure if I could bring it back to life. But not much later after several weeks of special attention to rid it of the infestation, it is flushing out with leaves and fruit everywhere. I tried just leaving the fruit alone, but I have never had a chance to eat the fruit because the birds apparently kept getting it before it got a chance to fully ripen. So I had to bag it with the awful red netting, and finally today I got to eat my first one. Delicious! It was like a very sweet blackberry I guess, but surprised me because I was expecting it to have a lot of tiny seeds, and I couldn't find even one in the fruit. That made for a more pleasant eating experience, but I was actually disappointed, as I was expecting to be loaded down with seeds to sprout. Not so.

The fruit is very juicy, and stains deep purple the second you touch it. (I am considering netting the whole plant rather than bagging fruiting limbs, which is awkward, but I hate covering the natural beauty of a plant up just to discourage birds. But if I don't at least bag, they will ransack this thing every day before I even have the chance to get out of bed apparently, because it is tasty.)

In looking online, the best I could determine is this is probably a red mulberry variety, because the leaves are slightly fuzzy, and the buds are larger - not the smaller ones associated with the white mulberry. The fruit is about 1 inch long.

Anybody who can tell me, based simply on what you're looking at, what cultivar it is? I guess there is a Morus rubra native to the US, but I don't think it's supposed to fruit down this far? I only know the plant was sprouted from seed and grown locally in this nursery, but the nursery changed owners and they have no idea what variety it is.

So I have a wide variety of stuff, including other Annonas, but this is my first Custard Apple/Annona reticulata.

Can anyone help me with a few questions? I found this at a fruit stand with owners who did not speak English. The best they could tell me about the name was "Annona," which they then mistakenly translated into English as "sugar apple."

But unlike the sugar apples they have had in the past, this skin is smooth (although the bumps are a bit pronounced), and it is LARGE - probably at least 2 pounds, 6 inches across and about 5 inches tall.

It is not soft yet - do I leave it on my counter until it is soft, like Sugar Apples?

I don't want to cut into it until it's ripe, so I can't be sure of the interior color. But can anyone identify what cultivar it is just by looking on the outside?

Also, I didn't realize Custard Apple grew down here (thought it was like Cherimoya where fruiting prefers temps a bit colder) - any thoughts on whether I should expect fruit from planted seeds in this climate? Can they do well in this soil? (Sugar Apples used to be grown commercially here in the Upper Keys and do very well with no help in our terrible soil.) Do Custard Apples come true from seed?

The Sugar Apples I've had have been delicious, but some quick looking around on various websites stated that I should expect the taste of this thing to be better? Would others say that is accurate?

I initially bought 2, but then they asked me for $30 in exchange, so I said NO THANKS! and let them rip me off with just the one at $15. Anyone else think that price is outrageous, or would you say that is typical? I could've driven up to Miami and gotten a whole tree for $30 probably from Pine Island Nursery... but I think they could see I didn't want to walk away without getting to try that fruit! Damn this addiction...

Thanks for any help in getting me familiar with this fruit. Hope those who have never had the chance to see one enjoy the pictures! It is a really striking-looking fruit, the size of a small melon!

Tropical seeds are funny things. They often are only viable a short time after they come out of a ripe tropical fruit/pod, and yet sometimes they take many months to germinate. Then again, some last eons trapped in amber, Jurassic Park style!

So I've planted over 500 seeds this month, covering I think close to 100 species of tropical fruits and vegetables, and it got me thinking...

What's the oldest tropical seed you've ever planted that did in fact germinate? How old and what was it? Did you care for it in a special manner to preserve it, or just have it sitting around in a packet somewhere?

And similarly, what was the longest time you've ever had to wait between planting, and germination? What type of seed was it?

Seeds are pretty miraculous things. To think a whole tree and fruit, and generations of other trees and fruit (and maybe a new variety of fruit!) may be sitting inside that tiny thing, and it might be sitting there for a very long time and still be living and waiting, feeling cold and heat and wet and dry, deciding on just the right time to come out and spread its leaves! It's pretty amazing.

I don't have a lot fruiting at the moment, but thought I would show a few of the things that are going on on my property now. Mostly, it is a great place for butterfly mating, apparently. I have multiple species that hang out (as well as dragonflies, ladybugs, and other living things) who seem to be having quite the party. Honeybees also love my property and I have a ton of those hanging around which you might spot in a few pictures, all quite healthy.




So excited for my first ever Hasya Sapodillas! They were amazingly delicious, and already there is a whole new flush of flowers everywhere! They were ripe right off the tree, and just melted in the mouth!



I'm also excited for my first ever bananas - which in this case come from a Dwarf Namwah. I gave it no special care at all, so I'm happy with the hands I got. In the future I will have more to give its offspring.








I also have a few Cavendish that are still small yet due to less sun exposure while I am busy redoing my whole yard.


I also have a Dwarf Pomegranate that continually puts out fruit. It keeps me happy while I wait for my 2 Vietnam Pomegranates to fruit the good stuff - which hopefully will be this year by the size of them!


Here's my little guanabana...


Then of course there are the various species of passifloras...

...and the baby iguanas who love them!




And I always keep some spare space for various plants that butterflies love, near my Native Plant garden:




Some mating butterflies:



And the same pair mating in the air:



It is difficult to keep up with hundreds of different plants at a time, but little moments like these where not much is going on are beautiful and peaceful. It's also nice to find a plant that you didn't do anything for for at least a year, and almost forgot existed, suddenly flower or fruit.

I'm hoping to see a few more follow suit in the next few months, including my Randia formosas, maybe the guanabana and/or the Vietnam pomegranates, possibly the tamarind, ice cream bean, and/or if I'm lucky the pitomba... I like walking around every few days and just looking to see what surprises me next!

[All photos copyright LivingParadise 2016!  ]

Hi there,

Wondering if anyone has suggestions on where I could buy these. I was hoping to visit a nursery or something in person (not trade with a member online in the Buy/Sell section) which is why I'm writing it here. Also, anyone have experiences with them in SFL? I'm under the impression that these taste good, and would be very happy in the conditions I have here. Would love to grow out near my waterfront, where I already have seagrape and other similar sea-tolerant plants. I'm also interested in them for their medicinal properties. I appreciate that they are also supposed to grow faster than some of the other garcinias I have, which seem to barely have grown in the past year at all.

Thanks for any info on growing them, or where I might get seeds or plants in SFL. Also would love to see photos if anybody is growing them!

So this is the story of my heart getting broken. I am putting a lot of time into giving you all the photos and details I can, because this pestilence has killed some 75 trees and plants already, and I need to be absolutely sure what it is.

About 10 months ago, I first noticed it, but I am no longer certain this is how it started. I bought a blueberry bush that I had shipped to me, and put it in a bag of organic potting soil  - soil that I had used for many other plants with no ill effect. I put the bag outside next to my fence so the blueberry could get natural light (mostly shade), and although I watered it carefully, within about a week it started to droop and look very thirsty. So I watered more, but to no avail. I then noticed the leaves crinkling and shriveling up, drying out, and turning brown. At first it was just a small section. But it grew, and no matter how I watered it, the plant soon became a dead dried twig with all the dead leaves still on it. It took less than 2 weeks to die.

I left the bag where it was by the fence, thinking I had somehow messed up with the blueberry, and would buy another to replace it. I did, and a new healthy bush arrived, which I then put in the same bag but with more acid and pine needles added to the soil. and was more careful to water more frequently right away. The plant was healthy for about a month, but I admit I left the dead blueberry beside the bag, and then this blueberry succumbed to the same fate.

After that, this pestilence raced through my yard, starting and concentrating most on this side nearest this area of the fence, but eventually spreading everywhere. Plants with delicate leaves, versus thick leathery ones, seem most vulnerable.

I thought the blueberry to be the source, since the soil had been used from the very same bag for other plants I was growing indoors, and they never got the disease. But just this past week, I visited a local state park and noticed that their seagrapes looked exactly like mine - all black stems with webbing on them. I never thought anything of this when I moved into my house a year and a half ago, because my neighbor said he thought that's what they all looked like when the birds picked them over. The plants otherwise looked healthy, but despite being a huge tree, never produced any fruit - all the stems start to grow green, and the next I see they are black with no friut on them. On the same trip this week, a different park had seagrape, and theirs had HEALTHY stems with actual grapes on them, in the same season. I realized that perhaps this problem came from the yard when I moved in, and might be related to the seagrape, since the other plants also had webbing when I looked very closely.

I have never been able to see any insect with the naked eye on any of these. It's not aphids. I assumed it was spider mites. I also considered whether it might be nematodes. It seemed too fast and dramatic to be a nutritional deficiency, and it's definitely not water. So I started out with a yard of healthy plants (despite the non-fruiting seagrape), and although I still have many healthy plants, now nearly everything I bring into the yard gets affected.

Here are some more details of the symptoms, plant by plant (I'm annoyed that all these pictures came out small, but I guess you can click on them to see the detail):

This is, I kid you not, the 4th lychee I have bought in the past year. This one I brought into the yard from Pine Island, very healthy, just 3 weeks ago. I have found that plants that go in the ground get sick much faster than if they stay on the other side of the yard in a pot, so I kept this in the pot and far away. I was planning to plant it just this weekend if it was still healthy. The pestilence seems to kill much faster now - it only showed signs of being struck 6 days ago. I sprayed it beforehand with organic insecticide (with rosemary oil and soap), which has worked for other plants with this illness. Doing it pre-emtively did protect it for a while. But I have found if I do not spray every 2 days without end, it shows up anyway. I let it go for 3 days, and there it was. I just can't keep up, with all the rest I have to do.


It has suddenly moved along to my Bahama coffee, which has been healthy in the ground for a full year now. This just started in the past week, and I am baffled because this is the same side of the fence as the blueberry, but a problem never showed until now. I initially assumed native plants like this were unaffected, but that is no longer true.

Right next to the Bahama coffee is the Wild Coffee, another native. One side is still healthy, but the side closest to the Bahama coffee is almost totally dead. This also just started a week ago. Spraying it on several different days seems to have stopped the problem, at least for now.

Here's a close-up of what it does to all the plants. Note the webbing. This is my Cherry of the Rio Grande, which after a full year in ground perfectly healthy, suddenly caught this 3 weeks ago, and despite spraying, it is not completely dead. My heart is breaking just looking at this. It is like taking the time out to make new friends, and after hanging out with them for months and starting to get close, seeing them all die one by one.

This is what happened to both my Ashoka trees.

Both my new yellow cacao and red cacao now look like this. It always starts off by killing new growth, turning it brown and webbed. Then it moves down the trunk to the mature leaves.

It killed m Muscadines, starting with the new buds.

Every time my plants try to put out new growth after losing all the leaves, it attacks the new growth. Spraying it will delay the problem, but as soon as I don't spray for a few days, it comes back. Some plants put out flush after flush of new buds, trying to keep up, and go months without a single leaf to feed them. But they keep trying. In the end, few can make it through such a task. Shooting high-powered water at it doesn't seem to make much difference, either.

This beautyberry, another native, has hung on through a full year of attacks. It was near the original blueberry, and was the second plant I noticed get sick. I originally thought it has a nutritional problem, despite being native, but it continues to lose leaves and try again despite showing evidence of the same webbing and problems as the others. I continue to spray it, and hose it down, and for the moment it is on an upswing again with no new signs of disease.

This muscadine tells an interesting tale. I put it in a month ago, after a long lull in new cases. I thought I had eradicated the problem, so started buying plants ago. This thing was VERY lush. I left it on the other side of the yard in its pot for a while, and no disease. So I thought great, the problem is gone. Put it in, still healthy. 2 weeks of health, no problem. It actually was growing so fast with all the rain we got already, that the branches got heavy and lost hold of their footing on the fence in some wind. I found them all touching the ground, and placed them back on the fence. The next day, you could see evidence of the illness, very mildly on all the tips that had touched the ground. The ones that stayed on then fence were fine. I have had many indications that the problem is coming from something in the soil - the very first signs of illness often start from the ground up, or from branches that touch the ground.But despite spraying, it traveled along the whole plant, and very quickly it lost all its leaves. I'm still hoping for this one to come back. Another muscadine died from this last year, but came back this Spring after appearing totally dead, including bark scratch test, for about 5 months! Most other plants are not so lucky.

One of three dead jaboticabas, right near the original blueberry site.

Dead strawberry tree, which was very happy and blooming up until about 4 months ago. This is next to the jaboticabas.Note the webbing.

This is an unusual case. This ice cream bean is actually still very happy, but got hit with the pest maybe 6 months ago. Spraying stopped the problem, but I noticed it also appears to have this kind of scale on it. They can be knocked off with jet water spray, but seem to have come back a little.

This is another weird case. This is my 2nd Key Lime - something which should grow well here. Initially, it was a big healthy young shrub, but died totally. I then replaced it with a pot that I bought that contained a Meyer Lemon and a Key Lime together. You can see that the Key Lime totally died, and the Meyer Lemon is just fine (as are the 2 other Meyer Lemons I have elsewhere on the property). I admit that I have seen some signs of snails, so I thought they might also be part of the equation here. The prior Key Lime DID have slime. Note though that a Persian Lime is right next store to this one, and has never had similar problems.

Red passionflower dead as a doornail from this issue. Invasive Leadwood seedling doing totally fine right next to it, though.

This cocoplum (native) was totally fine, and extremely lush, while I kept it in its pot on the other side of the yard. I then moved it still in its pot to this new location, and left it overnight to plant the next morning. By the time I went to plant it, it was already showing that telltale thirsty-looking wilting. I sprayed and sprayed, but it got wiped out within a week.

This is the 2nd guava I have planted here. I think it's a goner. It stopped putting out buds, and no longer passes the scratch test, even at the very base. This thing kept killing all the new buds, but it hung on for a few months. The plant behind it is a blolly, which is a native, that took a hit but after a single spray ended up fine.

This is a corner of fence that surrounds the guava. It shows a (probably invasive) vine that is extremely hardy, which started showing the disease weeks after the guava. You can see how it only affects part of it, for now. On very strong plants, the illness only spreads slowly. On new plants with delicate leaves, it spreads like wildfire.

My gorgeous black sapote, which was one of the healthiest plants I had in the yard for a year. I thought it might push fruit this year. Then a few months ago, despite its thick leaves, it suddenly caught the same thing, and turned black.

This is very recent that it has affected my pineapple. I have sprayed, and I think stopped it. One side seem stabilized. The pineapple next to this is completely fine.

You can see the dead stick under the passionflower, which is another part of the same plant that got recently attacked and died. It did not kill the whole plant though, as yet anyway, and it still puts out a profusion of flowers.

This killed a new passionfruit I had grown from seed, which was for months perfectly happy.

What's rather stunning is I just started spraying this seagrape with the organic spray a month ago. This is the first time since I've moved here that I've ever seen green stems with the beginnings of grapes. But you can see, already they are turning rust-colored, and are headed for the same old black with webbing.

It attacked this yellow hibiscus, but spraying stopped it, and it has seemed to be stable for the past 3 months.

This is the second Chinese red hat that I put here, and both died in literally a matter of days, from being so lush they looked indestructible. For some reason, it is still the fastest death among all the different species of plants that have been attacked - eve versus seedlings.

It breaks my heart, but there it is. The second loquat I have put in to have fruit, and the second to die a horrible death before I could taste it. No amount of spray did much for either.


This calamondin was so happy for a year, fruiting profusely, until 3 months ago. It lingered, but in the end it lost.

This bitter gourd was doing great, and I was surprised because 5 other previous ones caught this disease and died quickly. But I was pre-emptively spraying, and it was getting big. Then just last week, I lapsed in the spraying for 3 days, and now it is totally dead. Spraying after it started to wilt could not save it.

This is my 15gal guanabana, which lost all of its leaves, and then has been putting out buds after buds for over 6 months. At this point, they only come out of the base, and lately it has not had a single successful bud, they turn black before they can even open. I don't think it has long. Spraying only keeps it alive, it never seems to stop the buds from eventually getting destroyed - just a bit more slowly.

This red surinam cherry was extremely full. It's still alive, and after much spraying it seems like the infection has stopped. But it's only got these few leaves, and has not put any new ones out in the past 2 months. Strangely, there is a tiny black suriname cherry next to it, and it has been fine all this time.

It took the life of this angel trumpet just this week. This thing was going strong for over a year with no signs.

Note the webbing on this passionfruit.

Suddenly, it is even starting to wipe out weeds, which up to now have been untouched as a group!

Dead landscape shrub, has been here for many years before I ever moved here, was strong as an ox, but now it's toast! Note the large tree and several pink hibiscuses behind it are just fine.

I planted this lush bougainvillea, and it was fine for a month, before it took ill. Spraying it caused it to survive just in time to produce that new shoot of green at the bottom, from the base which was the only part still alive. Because I kept spraying the organic rosemary oil/soap spray, it survived.

I am extremely disturbed that it ran all the way up my coconut palms this Winter, a good 25 feet. The fronds are generally ok, but it killed all the green coconuts in a week before they had a chance to reach full size. They never turned yellow - that is death, not normal brown maturity. I am really hoping they will push out a healthy crop next time, after I cut these down. I can't reach that high to spray anything.

I lost about 150 coconuts, which I was counting on as a big part of my diet for the entire next year. Only 4 small green ones survived.

It has now made its way up my balcony. It seems to travel through the air, onto my pearock driveway, and now up to the balcony. This invasive coral vine should be indestructible, but even this has suffered, but continues to come back. Spraying seems to have stopped it, for now.

You can see the same spotty discoloration and rusty edges on this Mysore Tropical Raspberry as on the Beautyberry on the other side of the yard and a full story lower. Spraying seemed to stop the problem, and this Mysore has been stable for 3 weeks.

My whole yard is not death and decay, but about 50% of it is. I am done buying plants. I don’t even want to plant my hundreds of rare seeds now. This has cost me thousands of dollars in plants, and more to the point, has been emotionally devastating. I thought it was spider mites. But I really need to be sure, before I lose everything, including mature trees that are worth thousands of dollars in my property value.

This took me several hours to create, but I'm sure you all can relate to how important this would be to a fruit tree lover.

I was lucky enough to do a little fruit tree hunting today to feed my sick habit [as an aside, is there a Fruit Trees Anonymous (FTA) meeting anywhere nearby - seems like Homestead might be an ideal place? I could probably use several meetings a week...], and one of the things I picked up was a Black sapote. I had one previously, and it was so happy where I had planted it for about a year, and then suddenly got a blight that swept through my yard, and before I even knew it had been affected, it was dead. So I just had this strong desire to replace the beautiful plant which was so happy in that location, while I was out shopping for other fruits, and when I took a look today I was met with a somewhat bewildering choice.

I was unaware before this that there even WERE different cultivars of Black Sapote - I had never heard of any previously. The one I had bought last time, from a local nursery, was only labeled "Black Sapote." When I've tasted it before at the god-sent Fruit & Spice Park, no specific variety was mentioned, either. So today there were multiple varieties I could choose from, including from what I remember, Wilson, Reinike, and Oblong...

I had never heard of any of these, and I really didn't want to pick the wrong one. But NONE of them looked like my prior plant, which had lush deep green leaves of a slightly wider shape than these. Ultimately, I chose the Oblong, because that particular plant was the healthiest of all of them.

But looking online, I am not finding really any information distinguishing the virtues or drawbacks of each variety - and unless I missed it, I did not see prior threads here that did so really either.

So can anybody tell me anything about Oblong vs. the others in terms of taste, growing habits, how prolific it is, etc? What about the other varieties? Do you know of cultivars I did not mention yet, and any details about them?

I feel very lucky today to have had the opportunity to choose among fruit, and in the case of something like Black Sapote which not too many in the general public in the US have ever even heard of, to have had a choice in cultivars on top of it. But with that gratitude considered, I hope I didn't pick the worst cultivar! I don't want something that bears 3 fruits every 4th year, with virtually no flavor, and some kind of mealy texture that makes it hard to determine the difference between ripe, and laden with worms!

This person Charlesippo has spammed the hell out of the forum, and for some reason I can't find where to flag any of the posts. Moderators, please delete this account and remove all the Spam!

Thanks so much.

I love that topic and would love for the forum to be more active, but 500 ads blocking out all relevant posts certainly don't help it to grow...

There are a number of what I presume to be mature tamarind trees in and near my property. When I first arrived at my new house in Dec, they had pods hanging - but I was too busy with the move to try to harvest and open any of them.

Fast forward a few months later, and dried pods split open and landed all over my yard. I now have hundreds of these sprouting everywhere, both in tree form, and in seedling form.

My intention was to eat the leaves off all the seedlings to use them up, as they are used as a vegetable in India and SE Asia. However, given that I am surrounded by poisonous things and plants that are easily mistaken for others, two things gave me pause:
1. I noticed that a neighbor down the street has something that looks very similar but the pods are huge - more like arm size. I'm not entirely sure if that's a completely different plant, or a different cultivar of tamarind, which made me a little less sure of myself, since these pods in my yard were a little on the small side - although still I think within the range of normal for tamarind. I thought I saw something like the neighbor's tree in the Fruit and Spice park, but that was ages ago so I don't remember.
2. All of my "tamarinds" look the same - except yesterday I noticed one has weird balls on it I have not seen on any of the other trees. Perhaps these are flower buds. But I couldn't get a good picture online to confirm that. It made me wonder if these are in fact tamarind, and if they are all the same plant - although they really do all look identical except for the little balls sticking out of just this one.

Could those who know tamarind well confirm for me whether or not that's what these are - so I can relax and get to cooking all these weeds? Thanks for any help.

I was just about to plant my Maha Chanok and Mallika mangoes, based on 2 different Florida websites that state that mangoes have "Moderate" salt tolerance, when I last-minute came across 2 other websites from other countries that state that mangoes have "Poor" salt tolerance. Can someone clarify for me which is correct?

I want to plant them in a spot that is about 75ft from the ocean. The spot is well-protected from wind, so salt burn to the leaves should not be a concern, but a few times a year during hurricane season this area may flood with salt water for a few hours. I can reach the area with a hose to help wash off the trees and dilute the soil, and I can add salt free soil to the top, but these I can do only after the water has receded of course. Would such contact with salt in the soil (considering that the soil probably already has some level of salt in it due to its below flood elevation and proximity to the waterfront), kill the trees? I don't want to risk destroying them, but I only have so many options for locations, and the others are further from the waterfront but have far less sun. I don't know if this issue is cultivar-dependent, and that's why the sources are conflicted on the level of tolerance...?

I welcome especially answers from anyone with first-hand experience of growing mangoes near the coastline in below-flood areas. I don't really want to guess about this, I want to feel some level of confidence that they will grow best where they are planted because I want to give the best shot at a good long life. I guess I could also consider building up mounds of slightly higher elevation to plant them on if that would help, but in the end, the ends of the roots are going to be touching salt water at some point in their lives anyway in that spot.

Thanks for any help!