The Tropical Fruit Forum

I have a very high success rate on lychees, rambutan, sapodilla, wax apple, guava, langsat, sour sop, canistel and others. In the last 2 weeks I have put over 200 marcots on my trees and expect most to work well from experience. Pity its hard to post pics these days.
Anyway I see a few red flags in the pics and descriptions. Ideal branch width is 1cm to 3 cm but micromarcots are easy. Ideal ringbark width is 1cm to 2cm not like in the pics below. Paint or brush with rootex or clonex 8g per l concentration. I prefer gel to powder. Have pre prepared ziplock (I use 15 x 9cm mostly) cut on one side then tape over ring back. Tape it up well. Aluminium foil does not change the success rate. Remove in 4 weeks to 6 months with 8 weeks being average. Make sure they are well rooted unlike the plant below in the pic. Trim then pot. EASY. The mix in the bag I use is 50 : vermiculite and coco coir but sphagnum is fine. Below does look too leafy with too many roots and should be settled in a pot until properly rooted.The ties shown are less secure and looser than using electrical tape. The width of bark removed below is way in excess of required. In many cases it works out better than grafting for tree vigour and speed to fruiting.

Sawadee, a gift wishing for wealth. Anyway these are all Garcinia hombriana (same as G.celebica) and are more common near the sea but can be inland. They are widespread from islands in Bay of Bengal through SE Asia to PNG. This species is variable with different forms. Popular opinion says it is one of the parents of mangosteen and unlike mangosteen produces true seeds.

Tried to get both orange and redder forest mangosteens from two different sellers this year, but finally got only the more orange type. Fruit from one seller were smaller and had almost no flesh at all, so I'm commenting only the bigger ones from another seller. She collected them from the forest somewhere in North-eastern Thailand.





The good:

Taste was pretty good, similar to purple mangosteen with maybe a little bit of banana mixed in. Some fruits were just sweet, some more sour in a nice way - sweet tampoi kind of sourness. Size was good, medium mangosteen size with thinner peel.

The bad/weird:

The flesh sticks to the big seeds, and where flesh ends and seed area starts was somewhat fuzzy. There was some latex (at least near the seeds) which sticks to the teeth and seems to change taste sensations somewhat, eg. noodles eaten after the mangosteens tasted weirdly bitter.

Best root stock for Ilama is pond apple. Gary Zill gave me that advice. At lest in FL

Awesome job Simon!  I purposefully didn’t graft on a male branch so my tree would have en extra year of growth without fruit set. It’s pushing a ton of new growth right now.
Looking at your fantastic photos though, makes me think I should graft a male branch on so it has all year to heal before next season. We still have “May Gray“ and “June gloom“ahead of us so I think I have at least 2 1/2 months for healing and growth before hot summer months.

My tree will definitely be ready to hold fruit next year and probably could’ve this year.

So many peoples dreams are about to start coming true with trees coming into production! It’s pretty amazing. Thank you for all your help as always, Simon.