The Tropical Fruit Forum

I've never heard glowing reports either.  I think most reports I have seen say it is insipid.  I have one here in Hawaii and it, so far, has been growing slowly.  I am hoping it is nearing the point where it will kick into gear and start to put on some serious growth.  I think it is one of those fruit that are grown for its novelty value, not its flavor.

I believe seeds for all of these except the Annona would be available from Oscar at Fruitlovers, Jim West in Ecuador, or Montoso in Puerto Rico.  You should be able to find links for them in the seed source section, above.

John

It has been a rough year with a rainy spring and then a near miss by a hurricane that dumped about 4' of water here in a couple of days.  My berry jack has been a trooper though, blooming throughout (& still blooming now).  It is carrying 3 fairly large (8-10") fruits now, several smaller ones (probably 5-6") and several blossoms; it is looking pretty promising that I'll have some to taste this year.  I have another berry seedling that seems to be much less vigorous (at least so far).  I also have a Ziman Pink that was a larger, grafted tree.  This berry jack has blown by that tree in growth and is carrying fruit while the Ziman has blasted all the fruit the past two years.  The bigger fruits are not the prettiest I have seen but I am hoping that will taste as good as the mother tree in Aus that Mike T was so good to send seed from.

Pics of the bigger fruits:

I have a few varieties of blackberry that have been fruiting for me here outside of Hilo at 600-700' altitude.  I decided to give them a try based upon a guy a short way down the coast (at similar altitude) that was successfully fruiting Natchez.  I'd need to check which ones are fruiting for me.  Correspondence with a prof at University of Arkansas put Natchez at 300-400 chill hours so I selected clones that were the same or less.  I see Navaho listed as 800 chill hours so I would try one with less if I were you.

John

If any of you have ordered Bellucia grossularioides from Jim West (or other Bellucia sp for that matter), it appears that they are self-incompatible so at least a couple need to be planted.  I will enter the link to the paper in the library section.

As others have mentioned, most do not consider this a top tier fruit (I would certainly put it under the 3 fruits you mention).  There are better varieties as some have mentioned but some are pretty bad.  To me, most seem to have a vegetal component but in the better varieties, there is enough fruity flavor & sweetness to offset this and make them more interesting.  Not a bad fruit to clear your palate after breakfast, for example, but not many people would be saying "oh boy, starfruit!" when they see one.

Another strike against this fruit is that it can be harmful to those with impaired kidney function so, if you have any kidney issues best to eat this sparingly, if at all.

John

Anyone know anything about this fruit?  It evidently occurs in Aus, PNG, & the Solomon Islands.  Since rare fruiters like Mike T do not seem to have mentioned this (couldn't find in google search), I am assuming it is not worth attention.

John

This has entries on some uncommon Myrtaceae:

https://ia801406.us.archive.org/15/items/tropicalamerican298mcva/tropicalamerican298mcva.pdf

I find myself really scratching my head over this string.  The original poster (N321), never mentioned patenting.  Maybe I misunderstood, but I did not get the impression he wanted to get rich off of this hypothetical mango, just wondered if there was a mechanism where it could be named at some central clearing house to avoid confusion with other mangoes.  Any sexually produced seed-grown plant is an individual clone and could conceivably be named and propagated (not saying this is always a good idea).  The notable thing about registration is that it ties a name to a seedling from a specific grower or hybridizer.  Otherwise, several people can give very different clones the same name and cause considerable confusion among growers.  A central registrar avoids this and sometimes doesn't even allow names that sound very similar to existing cultivars.

I hope your stream has finally gone away, Oscar.

Its been raining all day here since morning.  Thankfully, it is not so heavy to form a stream here today.  For the prior three days, for much of the time, I have had a stream running about 15' from my house (about 3' from my lanai), making a small pond in the backyard before it flows off into the small pali in back of my house.

Rained all night long here. Have a stream coursing through length of my whole orchard. Short pause in rain right now at 11AM. No sign of clear sky or sun here.

The rain finally stopped here sometime early morning, I hope it is really over now.  Seems quiet this am but still completely socked in with clouds.  Our PV system has made virtually no power the last few days -- I hope the sun pops out at some point today.

Good luck to those on neighbor islands, it sounds like parts of Maui have probably gotten hammered too, hopefully the rest of the state will be spared anything too bad.

John

Ok, I guess I was not providing enough detail.  I have been using "rootstock" as terminology to differentiate the host plant from the scion.  All of the grafts from this recent round of grafting has been on smaller branches (probably 3/8 - 3/4" diameter).  These were all relatively young branches.  The goal was a cocktail mango tree, not decapitating a tree for conversion to a new cultivar.  There was still lots of leaves present for energy (both below the graft and on adjacent, ungrafted branches) as well as lots of stored energy as these are fruiting sized mango trees with significant mass.

There was only a couple of grafts from the previous time attempted with large diameter wood (I know success rate is lower in this scenario but I was just trying to mention that the success rate was not strictly related to scion size matching the "rootstock" in my attempts).  I know of people in the area who have successfully topworked other tropicals, in some cases, where the "rootstock" was 6-8" diameter, maybe more.  But these were not mangoes.

It seemed to me to be a bad sign that the lower buds were developing into competing shoots but it seems to indicate to me that this is showing the tree is in a (very) active growth phase, which is what I assume you would want.  I'm not sure why the scions did not kick into gear & start sprouting.  Next time around, I will probably concentrate on the "grave/coffin" graft method.  This will also allow me to leave leaves above the graft, perhaps that will be more helpful.

Oh well, back to soggy hurricane Lane.  I've got a break in the torrential rain for a moment so internet was back up again (down most of yesterday).

John