More cold-tolerant lychee

[850FL]

Anybody have any more info on this particular tree, or any idea as to which heritage it originated? Is of particular interest especially here in the upper gulf coast where we get into the winter teens occasionally.

http://buyraretropicalplants.com/fruit/litchi-chinensis/

Temperature/Zone
25°: F, between zone 9b and zone 10b. I am currently developing a cold hardy lychee tree. As a young tree (1″ caliper), it has withstood temperatures as low as 150: F, without any damage at all. I hope to have this tree available eventually. I’ll keep you posted. [/quote

[Mike T]

Very hard, time consuming and costly  to breed and trial new types for particular attributes. Might be he just selected a chines type and trialled it.

[850FL]

Either way there’s not much info on any particular variety that’ll withstand that much cold w/o damage

This could perhaps be grown all the way up in some lower 8a climates if it doesn’t even damage at 15F..

[Jaboticaba45]

It never goes below 15 here...

[850FL]

Then how are you in 7b... ... .. .??

[Jaboticaba45]

Then how are you in 7b... ... .. .??

Just maybe once every 10 years it goes below 15...The lowest on the average winter is 15-20. Even if the lychee is cold hardy to 15, prolonged temps below 40 would kill it. Although for zone 8 and 9 growers, this tree could work. Still I would be skeptical if it works in 8a-b as I have used to live in that zone. Just my imput...take as a grain of salt.

[850FL]

Very hard, time consuming and costly  to breed and trial new types for particular attributes. Might be he just selected a chines type and trialled it.

Yes but, not necessarily always.. take for example the dorsett golden apple. Some lady in the Bahamas had a golden delicious seedling I believe growing in her orchard, probably among a few, and this one produced with very few chill hours. Another example may be this lychee.. I doubt this Randy guy was in a lab segregating individuals with prominent cold hardiness gene sets and hybridizing and back-crossing and all that. I mean, I could be wrong, but I doubt it..? You are right though there’s many other examples of labs and universities  etc doing very specific crosses and selections to develop varieties and that may take much more time effort and money. But it can also be done with a rain dance and a handful of lucky random seeds

[850FL]

Then how are you in 7b... ... .. .??

Just maybe once every 10 years it goes below 15...The lowest on the average winter is 15-20. Even if the lychee is cold hardy to 15, prolonged temps below 40 would kill it. Although for zone 8 and 9 growers, this tree could work. Still I would be skeptical if it works in 8a-b as I have used to live in that zone. Just my imput...take as a grain of salt.

I see what you’re saying.. so technically you’re normally an 8b environment (minus that rare low of <15)?
How prolonged do you mean by prolonged temps in the 40s? Like 2 days,  or 2 weeks?
I need to pay more attention to my climate when it gets into 20-40F range weather for consecutive days in a bad winter and see how the lychees, among several other marginals/experimentals, fare. We had something like a ‘2 day’ (30-40 hr?) freeze 5 years ago and that defoliated many mature Meyer lemons and even burnt back some quite large Valencia’s and blood oranges to give you an idea.. Burnt the living Heck out of a buddy’s mature ortanique orange too.  I’m curious how a lychee like this superior cold tolerant one would respond under that type of freeze event? I mean, I would assume that since it can handle 15F with no damage, it can then take sub-15F temps/frost, and so I beg to argue that a few consecutive days of 40s temps or even 30s temps wouldn’t do much harm? UNLESS there’s sudden 30-40 degree or greater temperature swings within a short amount of time, that may end up doing more damage.. who knows lol

[Mike T]

True 850 and the words "I myself have developed a cold tolerant lychee variety" were misinterpreted by me as meaning he had done it.

[850FL]

I’ve tried to contact this randy guy several times but he NEVER responds! I think maybe he doesn’t want people propagating his lychee if they got a hold of a specimen? Or maybe he’s in the process of propagating enough to have a good run selling a bunch of them and assumes that then some of those buyers will start propagating themselves and never have a need to buy any more than just that one? Or maybe he’s applied for a plant patent and won’t sell any propagations till it’s set in stone for a few decades?? I have no idea

[Tropheus76]

Lychee do fine in prolonged upper 30s and even the occasional dip into the low 30s and light frost. I have had longans conk out on me in those temps but not lychee, thus I have always been confused when people say lychee cant tolerate cold weather when they are more tolerant than mango.

that said I have major doubts about a lychee that can survive in the teens, that's too drastic from standard lychees. But then again we have Yuzu lemons which laugh in the face of low teens so there are oddballs out there that break the mold.

[bsbullie]

His "development" is all well and good but i see no evidence it has fruited yet (a seedling with a 1" caliper trunk, I doubt it has).  Why are we making such a big deal over a tree that most likely has many years before it fruits and if/when it does, who knows what the quality will be. 

In my negative but harsh reality response,  I will believe it when I see it, and not from one random tree.  It needs to fruit more than once, be propagated and see what the propagated trees do with the cold and fruit quality.

[Jaboticaba45]

Then how are you in 7b... ... .. .??

Just maybe once every 10 years it goes below 15...The lowest on the average winter is 15-20. Even if the lychee is cold hardy to 15, prolonged temps below 40 would kill it. Although for zone 8 and 9 growers, this tree could work. Still I would be skeptical if it works in 8a-b as I have used to live in that zone. Just my imput...take as a grain of salt.

I see what you’re saying.. so technically you’re normally an 8b environment (minus that rare low of <15)?
How prolonged do you mean by prolonged temps in the 40s? Like 2 days,  or 2 weeks?
I need to pay more attention to my climate when it gets into 20-40F range weather for consecutive days in a bad winter and see how the lychees, among several other marginals/experimentals, fare. We had something like a ‘2 day’ (30-40 hr?) freeze 5 years ago and that defoliated many mature Meyer lemons and even burnt back some quite large Valencia’s, canary palms, and blood oranges to give you an idea.. Burnt the living Heck out of a buddy’s mature ortanique orange too.  I’m curious how a lychee like this superior cold tolerant one would respond under that type of freeze event? I mean, I would assume that since it can handle 15F with no damage, it can then take sub-15F temps/frost, and so I beg to argue that a few consecutive days of 40s temps or even 30s temps wouldn’t do much harm? UNLESS there’s sudden 30-40 degree or greater temperature swings within a short amount of time, that may end up doing more damage.. who knows lol

We have over 70 days of below freezing weather. In northern FL, that number would drop to maybe 5 or 10 days. I do agree with Bsbullie, I would also think the quality of fruit to be sub par. Who knows? What differentiates us from you is the length of cold weather, not the lows.

[850FL]

His "development" is all well and good but i see no evidence it has fruited yet (a seedling with a 1" caliper trunk, I doubt it has).  Why are we making such a big deal over a tree that most likely has many years before it fruits and if/when it does, who knows what the quality will be. 

In my negative but harsh reality response,  I will believe it when I see it, and not from one random tree.  It needs to fruit more than once, be propagated and see what the propagated trees do with the cold and fruit quality.

I don’t know if he deleted this information or if it’s somewhere else on his website, but: YES it has fruited and the fruit are ‘excellent quality’ and even better, it’s a chicken tongue variety! Again I don’t know if he took that info down or if it’s lurkin around somewhere else on his website but I clearly remember that much.Because I shot him an email asking if the lineage was sweetheart or hap ik and he didn’t respond. He said the thing withstood temps to 15F, which in his parts (Tampa), last time that happened I think was in the late 80s. So it was probably had that 1” caliper in the 80s. So this tree is definitely mature. Even more evidence being his statement saying he’s currently trialing the variety and may have it available in the future, meaning it’s large enough to air layer, and I don’t think most people go around air layering 1” caliper seedlings lol

[850FL]

Seems this variety overall is good if not excellent in most regards. The only other unknown variables that could sway the overall ‘rating’ of this variety at this point would be disease resistance (most lychees are resistant to most pests anyway, maybe except the erithinose mite..), fruiting consistency, yield, and salinity tolerance (I don’t think any lychee is very tolerant?), maybe a couple others in question. But so far seems superior in the lychee realm

[NateTheGreat]

It's probably just bullshit. The Chinese have been selecting lychee for a thousand years, and this guy just happened to breed a variety which withstands 15 F and has great fruit with tiny seeds?

[Jaboticaba45]

If the tree is 40 years old, I would think it is old enough to offer budwood...

[850FL]

Lychee do fine in prolonged upper 30s and even the occasional dip into the low 30s and light frost. I have had longans conk out on me in those temps but not lychee, thus I have always been confused when people say lychee cant tolerate cold weather when they are more tolerant than mango.

that said I have major doubts about a lychee that can survive in the teens, that's too drastic from standard lychees. But then again we have Yuzu lemons which laugh in the face of low teens so there are oddballs out there that break the mold.

That’s funny, the same thought went through my head about the citrus! I wanna compare lychees to citrus (minus super outliers like yuzu and swingler rootstocks). Most lychees are probably on the cold tolerance spectrum near key limes and eureka lemons if you know what I mean. Maybe some on the level of a Persian lime or whatever. Then there’s this particular one that is gettin into satsuma territory, and that’s an interesting thing.
Now I don’t know how prolonged that 15 degree hard freeze in Tampa was? However by most accounts in Florida those major 80s freezes were absolutely brutal. My part in Pcola saw single digits, the coldest it’s been since they even started recording freeze temps in this area around the turn of the century.

[850FL]

If the tree is 40 years old, I would think it is old enough to offer budwood...

The way I see it he’s being stingy

They’re apparently hard to graft or root from cuttings anyway. Best off air layering

[850FL]

It's probably just bullshit. The Chinese have been selecting lychee for a thousand years, and this guy just happened to breed a variety which withstands 15 F and has great fruit with tiny seeds?

He further developed off a solid variety that already was developed over some millennia. Hence why it only keeps gettin better.

Dude maybe took a trip to China and stole an obscure variety, but hey it’s not like the Chinese haven’t stole our manufacturing jobs then sold us back cheap garbage

[bsbullie]

And, if its on the internet, it must be true..

[850FL]

By the same accord why should I take anybody’s advice here

Not that I’m not going to

[bsbullie]

By the same accord why should I take anybody’s advice here

Not that I’m not going to

You dont have to, nothing off anyone's back.  You started the thread...  😉