The Tropical Fruit Forum

Link to old thread about ndea with discussion by John and Oscar:
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=4845.0

Sarcocephalus has been nested in Nauclea. Sarcocephalus xanthoxylon is an obsolete name for Nauclea xanthoxylon. The Wikipedia entry for Sarcocephalus is incomplete and out of date. Here's the study about classification within Hymenodicteae-Naucleeae, which covers 220 species in 28 genera:
http://www.bergianska.se/english/research/publications/publications-2014/löfstrand-s-d-krüger-å-razafimandimbison-s-g-and-bremer-b-2014-1.221237

So there are at least 2 species of Nauclea we're interested in growing:
Nauclea xanthoxylon
Nauclea latifolia

I'm pretty sure both are already growing on the island (Hawai'i), and I'm aware of at least 3 fruiting Nauclea trees in the Hilo area, one of which is confidently IDed as N. latifolia and has received positive taste judgements that match the positive reports found online, but it's not known to me whether N. xanthoxylon is fruiting here yet, although a tree I've seen firsthand in Onomea does seem to match its description. Apparently the N. xanthoxylon fruits are larger and yellow compared to the red and golfball-esque N. latifolia fruits.

Both species are from central Africa and apparently span a large range in Africa, but N. latifolia is a dry climate tree that reaches into the drier area of Sudan and Ethiopia, whereas N. xanthoxylon is known to require a very wet, even swampy, environment to set fruit. Paul Noren told us during his visit a few years ago that it grows tall and narrow and fails to fruit in dry land, but grows wide and shrubby and fruits well in swampy land.

I don't know to what extent the name "ndea" applies to N. latifolia, but it seems widely applied to N. xanthoxylon. A common name for N. latifolia is "pincushion fruit", which seems nice enough to adopt.

My wife wants me to buy her a folding pocket knife for everyday use but she said it needs to be strong enough for opening durians. We're dealing with a lot of premature/windfall durians this season, so I can see how this will be handy to process them in the field for seeds. I don't know much about knives, so maybe someone here has advice? I understand that many small knives are engineered for sharp slicing but can't handle bending or prying, so maybe there's a beefier blade type out there?

This should be of tremendous interest to the boundary pushers and urbanists here. A nice article about the now uncommon technique of using stone/brick walls to control microclimates in orchards.

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-farming.html