The Tropical Fruit Forum

Here in Northern California I have a Canistel (unknown variety) that's been outside for two years and it's never suffered any harm from the cold. In fact it pushed out some new leaves this winter. Just put it in the ground this past April. Who knows if it will ever fruit or just be one of those subtropicals that survives but grows super slow and produces nothing.

Around 28F

I planted a 5g tree last year. The former leader of the tree has already been overshadowed by a lower branch that started growing sideways and had to be trained up. I hope I can coerce it to grow vertically. At least it seems to be hardy enough for 9b.

Let me guess, the tree was simply labeled "Sapote" where you bought it?

There are 4 million and one fruits with "Sapote" in the name and yet people still go around calling some of them simply "Sapote" as if it's the only sapote on earth.

For the love of pete, people, stop it!

The winter after this video was made the Pitomba tree died back to the ground. It has since grown back from the roots but is now the same size as a seedling I grew from the fruit I ate in the video. I dug it out and it is now in a 15g pot where it will probably take 10 years to reach the size it was before.  It is not a good plant for zone 9b it seems.

When I received my scions there was still mid 30s weather in our forecast so I felt it was a bad time to graft. Did some searching on this forum and found some old threads where people said cherimoya scions could last in the refrigerator for at least a month. Well that was probably bad advice. I put them in the fridge for two weeks until our weather improved. When I grafted them the scions were all still green but the buds had mostly turned black. I grafted anyway. That was two weeks ago and nothing has pushed yet.

This is the year of the Kesusu. The trees at Tenom Park in Borneo went off and a number of seed sellers and collectors scooped up all the fruit and sent thousands of seeds around the world. If your seeds don't germinate, I bet you'll have a chance to buy a seedling within the next year or two on eBay or this forum.

Here in Los Gatos it got down to 32. A bit shocking given that my brain had already switched into "spring mode" from that stretch of high 70s earlier in February. Too early to assess the damage, especially given the 10 more days of near-freezing temps in the forecast.

I was relieved to see that many of my most tender plants, like Jackfruit, Babaco and Green Sapote, had no frost near them because I planted them near the canopy of large oak trees. Others, which are under open sky, like Carambola and many Cherimoyas, had light frost on their leaves. Considering that most winters we dip down in the 20s repeatedly, I am still counting this as a mild winter.

The list is missing some of the Cherimoya varieties you sold last summer, like Libby and Campas. Will those be available in March?

Here are some closeups of the supposed Uvaia leaves. As you can see they are not fuzzy like Ubajay leaves.





Here are leaves from my two Ubajay trees, one from Brazil and one from Santa Barbara.

It hasn't fruited or flowered yet so we have only the leaves to go on. I have a couple variations of E. myrcianthes (aka Hexachlamys edulis) and they look very different from this plant. Eugenia is such a mysterious and confusing genus.

My other Eugenia pyriformis plants (sourced from the highly reputable Miguel.pt) have tiny leaves and look totally different.

You are growing Uvaia outside in zone 9?

I am in zone 9b (California) and my Eugenia pyriformis isn't too happy this winter. Not dying just looking sickly.

Kind of looks like the seedling fell over sideways and then regrew upwards after that. Not all that unusual.