The Tropical Fruit Forum

A few days ago, I emailed Andi Voss but haven't got a reply yet. I am curious whether his plant has flowered and how hardy it is up there compared to your place, Ilya.

I have recently received budwood of this cross and grafted it on Poncirus. This is actually only my second succesful graft.
However, I can find very little information on it and would be grateful if anyone could share what they know.





cheers

Quote from: Citradia on May 11, 2018, 08:28:02 PM

Florian, I bet you can grow and fruit different varieties of rowan ( European mountain ash), or sorbus aucuparia. I make jelly out of mine. They may even grow wild where you live. I'm growing the Native American rowan and a Chinese pink-fruited variety, and a white fruit variety. I'm sure you already know rowan is the ultimate fruit tree for cold long winters and short cool summers.

Lol, rowan (known here as reyniber) is an Icelandic native; for example, one of our more popular southern beaches is Reynisfjara, aka Rowan Beach. They can definitely handle continental Europe!    I made a jelly from it once (freezing and a long cooking as I found instructions for online), and found it... a bit of odd.  It tasted like something you might serve with meat, more than something you'd spread on bread. Yes, sweet and with fruit tastes, but also something else that I couldn't put my finger on.

Then again, I'm not really a jelly person to begin with, and the need to process the berries to remove toxic parasorbic acid was sort of a turn-off to me. I understand that some varieties have actually been bred for consumption, so maybe they're better.  On the upside, rowans sure are pretty trees, esp. in the winter.

When one asks about the most exotic fruit, are we talking taste or appearance, and by "exotic", do we mean "tropical" or "unusual"?  Lardizabalaceae has some weird looking temperate edible species, for example - often strongly lilac-coloured fruits that open themselves up when ripe, revealing their mucilaginous white interiors.  Sweetness is often quite high, but acidity is usually low.  A really remarkable Lardizabalaceae species is the monotypic Boquila trifoliata ("Chameleon Vine") which has the so-far scientifically unexplained ability to mimic the leaves of whatever plant it grows on (even fake plants), in colour, size and shape. It's so good at what it does that its ability went undiscovered until relatively recently (scientists had just assumed that the species was incredibly variable, not noticing that it always matched to its host and would change leaf styles as it grew between plants).  The berries are reportedly edible but I haven't found anyone who's actually eaten them.  Supposed to be tolerant to 7b.

I did not specify what I meant by exotic on purpose to get more suggestions. But what I really meant was 'unusual' but also genera that usually grow in the (sub) tropics but have members growing in temperate areas like maypop or pawpaw. Things that people don't grow here although they could because they associate them with much warmer environments.

It's been very late this year, flowers are only appearing now and it barely put on any growth. That's why I thought it would be better off in the ground.

There are cultivars of goji that are sweet(ish) when fresh.

I hear Ronde de Bordeaux is excellent too.

Here's hoping mine will make fully functional flowers this year. It is not yet flowering but there are a few buds.

I do have some rarer cultivars of common fruits. For instance, I have a pretty sweet goji berry (called Turgidus) or thornless gooseberries but I really am interested in fruit that people generally think won't grow here.

I have tried maypop a few times but it has never thrived and disappeared sooner or later.

I've just discovered Decaisnea fargesii – is this one worth growing? The blue fruit looks pretty cool.

Similar weather here. At first very mild and at the end of February/beginning of March it was very cold with around 10 days below 0C, absolute low was -11C.
Currently, I only have three citrus planted out. My flying dragon is fine, obviously. A Citrange Cunningham 'Livurce' protected by 3 layers of fleece looks dead as a dodo. All the leaves are fried, the branches look dry and the bark split everywhere. And finally, my ichangensis x sinensis only suffered some minor damage on the youngest twigs. It was, however, protected with a little styrofoam house (5cm). I want to give it some time to grow larger and gain hardiness.

I live in Switzerland, most years we're in zone 8a. Winters are usually long and very damp and summers lack heat. Prolonged freezes are not unusual.
To give you an idea: I can grow figs succesfully although the second crop only ripens in good years.

I have acquired some early pomegranates and a Kaki "early fuyu" but they haven't flowered yet.

Any additional ideas would be greatly appreciated.

The 245 in Eisenhut's list, the 6-7-2 is their 244.

I have read that too and I have always wondered whether perhaps there was something wrong with my olfactory sense