The Tropical Fruit Forum

Is it annona montana?

Big ones on right look like Saba... middle yellow ones look like Nam wah

Awesome, Peter thanks for sharing. Have your trees fruited before or will this be the first time?

Yes #1 lemon drop mangosteen (G.intermedia)
#2 is imbe  (g.livingstonei)

Took a trip to Puerto Vallarta to find Lucs garcinia trees growing in their natural habitat. Success! Also had the chance to meet with Luc and he was kind enough to bring fresh fruit to my hotel lobby for me to sample.

Taste report: Wow it's good! I had high expectations but it exceeded those. It's hard to describe but best I can say is like a mangosteen mixed with a mango. Nice blend of sweet with some tart. It's very good and worth making space for. Chop something down if you need to. In the area where I found the trees they need to fight among other nearby large trees to reach the sunlight so their growth habit is straight up and the scaffold branches can be very high up.

Luc: thank you for making the effort to meet me and bring me fruit. Luc is a good man and when this fruit is officially named it should be named after him for all of his efforts to spread this fruit all over the world. Luc will forever be remembered for this fruit and his name should live on with it. Luc mentioned we are getting closer to getting the  official name for the species. If it wasn't for Luc, there may not be anybody studying this species.

Raul ( Raulglezruiz ) also brought me a whole bag of the fruit and even scions to me even though he and I were very busy in my short time there. Raul thank you for your efforts! Much appreciated and I should have more time next visit.

I've attached photos of Luc's garcinia growing wild as well as the fruit Luc brought me.

https://www.google.com/search?q=asian+market+albany&oq=asian+market+a&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0j5j0j69i60.10762j0j4&client=ms-android-hms-tmobile-us&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

Looks like there's a few

Wait for the color - advice from Mr. Pickering himself on this forum

are they selling the 3-gallon for $15? if so that's a whole lot better than $50...

Call them tomorrow and ask? I bought one for 15 a couple years ago.

very South Florida - zip 33165. so close and yet so far away! if there was someone willing to pickup and package and ship a plant and it didn't end up costing more than the $50 plus shipping I'd pay on ebay that would be amazing! but it's a pretty big favor to ask.
what size are they offering? if it's one gallon or smaller it's a huge temptation.

They are in 3gal but shouldn't be an issue for shipping to SFL. I'd be willing to help you out. I'll check to see if they have any left.

Worm resistance might be better as its variegated. I doubt a fruit fly is going to pass up on an unprotected ripe fruit though. Can smell the ripe fruit from 15ft away. I would not label it vigorous compared to other guavas. Tasted like your average guava, has the normal heavy guava fragrance when the fruit is ripe. If you like guava you'll like it.

So I had a young TR Hovey plant, and I am soooo mad that after a flood this Winter (yes, I said Winter, in the middle of the dry season - thanks sea level rise!), it killed my TR Hovey after it was probably months away from its first fruit.

Anyway, learned my lesson, I now want to plant a bunch in various areas of the yard to see which is less prone to brackish water flood so I can get fruit. But buying a bunch of plants is expensive, and I don't know of a local supplier so they'd each have to be shipped. Plus, since I've never tasted it, I'm not even sure if I'll like it enough to spend that much.

*I see lots of advertisements for seeds - but do TR Hovey seeds come true? I also of course wonder how reliable these sellers are in term of correct variety, but I prefer being able to buy online anonymously on Amazon, Etsy, or Ebay, to making arrangements with people on the forum. (Recommendation of specific sellers on any of those 3 sites that you know would be the correct variety and viable seed would also be appreciated.)

Don't be too mad... the fruit of TR Hovey is more bottom of the barrel than top shelf and that is putting it lightly. Ultra productive variety and good for harvesting green young papaya for Papaya salad but when the fruit is ripe as one other member here put it - it's "like 3lb bags of vomit to eat". I chopped mine down after tasting them. There are much better varieties out there imo for both young and ripe papaya.

The tree is pretty big. Maybe 15-20 yrs? And looks like it's going through its normal flowering/fruiting now. This particular fruit was one that set and developed thru our "winter" and there is a bigger fruit still on the tree from same bloom but not quite ready yet. The fruit and texture seems like it can go from semi firm to full on custardy snotty mush very fast after reaching ripe and harvesting but flavor is still good.

Have you guys growing Rollinia seen much variability in taste of fruits from seed? Maybe superior selections out there but this one was tasty to me.

Maybe hit the markets in Kampala, Uganda and while you're there go check out Murchison Falls / Victoria Nile from Jinja - just watch out for crocs and hippo. You probably won't find much other fruit outside of mango, banana, pineapple, passion fruit, papaya, melon, tomato, citrus, cucumber, pumpkin. There is also this place near Jinja http://www.busainofruits.com/About.htm