The Tropical Fruit Forum

John, I've got an extra nance tree to give you and also fruit samples! The season is just starting and there are two huge old fruiting trees in Hilo at the university campus. I'll send you an email with more info.

I tasted Nauclea latifolia a few days ago. Very good, like a meatier, drier, more flavorful dragonfruit. Faint bitterness mixed with mild sweetness. Definitely worth growing. The tree seems vigorous and adapted to dry, harsh conditions, but a fairly small tree. I observed healthy, fruiting trees growing in very poor conditions with very little soil or organic matter.

Link to old thread about ndea with discussion by John and Oscar:
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=4845.0

Sarcocephalus has been nested in Nauclea. Sarcocephalus xanthoxylon is an obsolete name for Nauclea xanthoxylon. The Wikipedia entry for Sarcocephalus is incomplete and out of date. Here's the study about classification within Hymenodicteae-Naucleeae, which covers 220 species in 28 genera:
http://www.bergianska.se/english/research/publications/publications-2014/löfstrand-s-d-krüger-å-razafimandimbison-s-g-and-bremer-b-2014-1.221237

So there are at least 2 species of Nauclea we're interested in growing:
Nauclea xanthoxylon
Nauclea latifolia

I'm pretty sure both are already growing on the island (Hawai'i), and I'm aware of at least 3 fruiting Nauclea trees in the Hilo area, one of which is confidently IDed as N. latifolia and has received positive taste judgements that match the positive reports found online, but it's not known to me whether N. xanthoxylon is fruiting here yet, although a tree I've seen firsthand in Onomea does seem to match its description. Apparently the N. xanthoxylon fruits are larger and yellow compared to the red and golfball-esque N. latifolia fruits.

Both species are from central Africa and apparently span a large range in Africa, but N. latifolia is a dry climate tree that reaches into the drier area of Sudan and Ethiopia, whereas N. xanthoxylon is known to require a very wet, even swampy, environment to set fruit. Paul Noren told us during his visit a few years ago that it grows tall and narrow and fails to fruit in dry land, but grows wide and shrubby and fruits well in swampy land.

I don't know to what extent the name "ndea" applies to N. latifolia, but it seems widely applied to N. xanthoxylon. A common name for N. latifolia is "pincushion fruit", which seems nice enough to adopt.

Comparing the study cited to my local conditions in Hawaii, I see the study was done in Cassilândia, which is about 19° from equator, about the same as here, and the temperatures measured during the study were mostly around 26°C, also about the same as here. In other words, a mild climate that rarely gets hot. So the study seems to offer no insight on the above questions of extreme heat tolerance.

The question remains how the sun tolerance changes with age of plant, since the study tested tiny plants up to 201 days of age, and all the anecdotal evidence suggests achacha (and mangosteen and other Garcinia) adapt well to full sun at some point. My friend who has gotten 2 generations of fruiting achacha here has grown them in full sun their entire lives, with fruit after 6 or 7 years from seed. He often talks about his belief that they like full sun, but it seems based on speculation. Maybe we can do a little better with more shade, but at least it's not a critical issue in practice.

Perhaps as the plant ages, its lower canopy gets shade from its upper canopy?

A friend nearby is a longtime acquaintance and customer of Sadhu in PR, a rare fruit collector probably well-known to most people on the forum here. He told me today he got word from Sadhu that his farm was destroyed and he doesn't know what to do in the future. He said that pretty much all the other farms were destroyed too.

I see an update to Sadhu's website that says more:
http://organicfarm.net/

Some pictures and notes on the "sulok sionggong" hybrid durian I tasted today. It turned out to be better than I could've hoped, really incredible down to the last bit. My experience with durian is limited to Hawai'i and I've never travelled elsewhere. It was my first time tasting a dense, extremely creamy durian. It was dramatically different than other durians I've tasted. The texture was pretty thick like creamy peanut butter. It reminded me of moist types of canistel, peanut butter fruit, etc. Not especially sweet, not bitter, mild, complex, subtle. Little to no odor. This is a fruit many people would get excited about.

Great pics, thanks Oscar. I would be very keen to taste that chanee seedling. We're seeing the same phenomenon in Hakalau this year, but I'm skeptical of the effect of fertilizing in your case, because neither of the two durian orchards I work for have been fertilized at all in the past 2 years and there are hundreds of fruits on the trees and 3 successive seasons at the same time--big fruits, small fruits, zillions of flowers. These are mostly gumpun/monthong fruits, maybe some chanee. So far only premature drops, no fruits ready to eat yet. I've had a few durians of smaller types from other places this season that are apparently producing in great abundance, like D132 and Pohakulani, Tomorrow I will be tasting a "sulok sionggong" durian for the first time, a hybrid of D. zibethinus and D. graveolens grafted by David Frenz. The spelling and name is dubious. The tree is fairly young, about 6 years I think, and flowered for the first time this year. Likewise for a puangmani tree, which flowered in the 2nd season. It's a great year for some of the more obscure durian varieties to finally fruit. There are so many durian growers around here I'm having trouble keeping track of what's in season.

By the way, does anyone know if it's a problem for pollen to get wet while collecting? I was collecting pollen to pollinate more puangmani earlier this evening and it was a bit drizzly. We put the flowers in ziploc bags and I hope they don't mold before tomorrow afternoon. We've been lucky to catch dry weather collecting pollen previously.

My thoughts are fairly close to Mike T here. I hesitate to make a generalization about these species. While everyone I know in Hawai'i says pulasan is clearly better than rambutan, I guess I'm the only one to rank the best rambutan higher than the best pulasan. Having worked for several rambutan orchards, I've consumed literally thousands of pounds of rambutan and tasted a good range of varieties. I don't think there's any other fruit in the world I could eat unlimited amounts of and never grow tired of. I've had unlimited access to superior lychee and longan while harvesting them, and after I stuff myself with them I get tired of them. But I have never gotten tired of rambutan. The best rambutan varieties have a complex flavor and a perfect texture. That slight firmness compared to pulasan and other Sapindaceae is a plus for me. That said, during a taste test comparison of several distinct pulasan varieties at the local research station in Hilo last year, everyone present, myself included, were completely blown away by the quality of the fruit and it proves that pulasan is a viable crop here if grown properly.

goosteen, I'm glad to have found the knife connoisseur of the group! Thanks for these excellent recommendations.

Peter's boot method might be adapted for weaker footware with a small piece of sheet metal or wood.

In the videos of durian vendors in SE Asia I've seen on youtube, a variety of knives are used, from long, skinny kitchen knives to beefy short cleaver/machete sorts. I think there's a wide selection of beefy fixed handle knives on the market that would be fine for abusing a little. Two of the more unusual ones I've stumbled across:

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Best-Gift-Home-Kitchen-Knife-Fruit-Durian-Knife-5c13-Blade-Rosewood-Handle-Camping-Fixed-Blade-Knives/819833_32806716337.html

https://www.lehmans.com/product/multi-purpose-power-knife/

i have Inga, Tamarind, and Manila Tamarind too
but they are too small or in containers,
 so havent used them to fix N for other plants yet.

Tamarind doesn't fix nitrogen. The Inga and Pithecellobium do.

Even though the fruit is similar to the marang/pedalai/breadfruit/breadfruit/etc wing of Artocarpus, keledang seems very different from those as a plant, and also quite different than jak/cempedak. Has anyone tried keledang onto kwai muk? Keledang trees are rare here and they don't fruit regularly, but kwai muk fruits regularly and can pump out thousands of seeds per season, so it would be a feasible experiment.

Also, has anyone tried A. anisophyllus onto A. odoratissimus?

I'm not claiming any authoritative information here, but this is just my personal summary of tidbits on the topic from good sources, not from seed vendor websites and blogs and other such extremely unreliable sources. The major point of contention is whether we can safely ID achacha as G. gardneriana. Oscar says probably not, but solid info supports that ID, including private communication from Charles Clement of Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia that was conveyed to me by a mutual friend. Newer information on Garcinia is also coming from Patrick Sweeney of Yale. I believe there is some DNA research on American Garcinias in the process of being published, but I don't have any details.

G. gardneriana, "bacuri mirim" (Brazil), "achachairu" (Bolivia), "achachairu corriente" (Bolivia), "achacha" (Australia/USA), "without mucronate apex", "narrowly elliptic leaves"

G. acuminata, "bacurizinho", very similar to G. gardneriana

G. macrophylla, "bacuripari", 5-8cm diameter, "scant pulp", large leaves, "prominently beaked fruit"

G. brasiliensis, "bacuripari liso", "smooth bacuripari", similar to bacuripari, 3-4cm diameter,

G. intermedia, "lemondrop", same as G. brasiliensis???

G. madruno, similar to G. macrophylla, echinate

G. benthamiana, slightly echinate

G. guacopary, "achachairu chico" (Bolivia), "broadly elliptic leaves", "mucronate apex that can pierce the skin", small fruit, "stiff pungent leaves", "soft rind", "thick, soft, spongy bark"

G. sp, "Luc's garcinia" (global internet), "Giant Luc" (global internet), "Mexican garcinia" (global internet), "limoncillo" (Mexico), larger than achacha

G. humilis, "G. lateriflora", from Monserrat, described in 1798, known in several Carribean locations, red skin, inside looks like a seedy mangosteen gone bad

In Bolivia, 5 species of Garcinia are found:
G. madruno
G. benthamiana
G. macrophylla
G. guacopary
G. gardneriana

According to Oscar's research, the mislabelling of achacha as G. humilis comes from various scientific sources over a period of many years and various publications, an error greatly amplified and propagated by the Australian farm who introduced commercial cultivation of the fruit in Australia.

There are ganyao clones on the island, so you can get those scions too. I heard they haven't done well for some people but I do know one guy who has an old, productive ganyao seedling in low elevation lower Puna. I believe he smuggled the seed from Thailand himself in the early 80s. The fruits from his tree are highly rated.

I agree with your plan to plant a few of each seed. 10 years goes by fast!