I've heard that lychee trees don't fruit often and are really susceptible to wind damage and parasites and the like, and really need to be pruned aggressively to fruit. However, recently, I noticed 4 lychee trees in my area. They're all at least 30 feet tall and loaded with fruit. I know at least one of the people owning a tree didn't do any maintenance on it—not even picking the fruit, as far as I can tell. I've read that lychee only fruits on new growth, (and that's why pruning is important) but that doesn't seem to be the case on that tree at least.
Is the reason people say they're finicky simply because they don't fruit every year without maintenance? Every single tree I've noticed has been covered in fruit (granted, the fruit may be the reason I recognize the tree. I didn't even know there were any lychee trees in the area before now. Then again, I've never known that lychees exist until recently...). They all survived a category 2 hurricane, so I guess they're beyond minor wind hurting them...
We did have an unusually cold winter where it approached freezing. Could that be the reason why every lychee tree appears to have fruit? Or does everyone just happen to have a good variety? (I was able to taste the fruit off of two of the trees. It tastes a lot better than the Mauritius lychee I've had before. They both had really big seeds and were about the same size. They tasted different, though; one of them was extra sweet. Brewster maybe? Or some hybrid grown from a seed? Would having a seed-grown root system make them hardier and/or fruit more often?)