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I was surprised this weekend to see that five of my seven pulasan trees are heavily flowering. I'm surprised because the trees have been grown from seed and have only been in the ground for five years. I sort of was expecting my GRAFTED rambutan trees to flower before the pulasan trees because they are a year older. Perhaps rambutans flower later? I hope (please, God!) one of the pulasans is a male. Anyway, it was a nice surprise! BTW, I planted two pulasans close together in one hole. The trunks are fused now and the "tree" is the largest of the lot. It's a beautiful healthy tree.
Congrats!I'm intrigued by this trunk fusion business.I've heard of 2 trees in one hole but hadn't thought about them fusing.Are there particular conditions needed to make this happen? Is it desirable and/or does it have advantages over separate trees in very, very close proximity?
Of my five Pulisans that flowered recently, it turns out two are males, judging by the flower photos I found on the net. (The flowers are distinctly different from each other!) Of the females only the largest tree managed to set fruit . . . and, it's loaded! I'm very happy.
What’s interesting to me is that I used to think that seedling females would need a male around to set fruit unless they were hermaphrodite. In rambutans I have never seen a female tree that wouldn’t produce on its own. I’ve also bagged flowers before they opened and they set fruit. The difference in the flowers is very obvious.With pulusan I have an area with 3 trees that all produce fruit. An adjacent male tree was eliminated long ago. I sell airlayers from those trees and a client got production of flat fruit with little or no pulp. Is that because the tree needs cross pollination? Another clone of that tree on another part of my farm is isolated from other pulusans and produces good fruit. The separation from the others is almost 200m with a section of rainforest corridor in between making cross pollination unlikely though not impossible.