The Tropical Fruit Forum

It is my experience.  I ship to USA daily and deal with customs a lot.  It's my observation that Miami be what i be.  I dont receive packages without paperwork often (here isnt so troublesome with import permits) but you have to sometimes to get very rare specimens.  Often times, perhaps more with ornamental plant collectors, a given plant may only be grown by a couple people, and they cannot obtain CITES more often than not.  And in my opinion if you miss 1 piece of paperwork, you may as well not bother doing it "properly".

Shipping international without paperwork isnt "right", but its industry standard on smaller orders/retail as many exporters are poorly setup for international plant trade (certainly not all, but a g reat deal cannot prepare the paperwork).

As an interesting note about USDA organization, they still to this day think Taiwan requires import permits, and some offices have gone so far as to reject phytosanitary certificates to people exporting to me because no import permit was shown to them (Taiwan does not have an import permit system).  I have personally called NY and TX and the government here repeatedly keeps calling as many people are, for the last 3-4 years or more, have trouble importing some things from the USA.

I agree with the principles of phytosanitary certificates, CITES etc, but some country's are so ass backwards it makes the whole ordeal, especially for a small order/shipment, tiresome and sometimes frustrating.  Lord knows i have a good number of cactus now sitting in various botanical gardens in the US.


so basically i live by: if its cheap/small, like seeds, just wing it.  If its important, do the paperwork and have some comfort.  but also be aware of the reasons they have all these rules.  a quarantine room for any serious importer should be a given, pests spread fast and hard so we all have a responsibility in that regard.

commercially, aside from pills, they also serve in some restaurants here, mostly after meal and before dessert, you get this and it "resets" the tastebuds they say for better tasting  dessert.

a popsicle is also made from it.

eating enough berries will literally, and strongly, make air sweet.  breathing through the mouth can give you candygasms without eating anything.

sorry i am slow, the nephelium i beleivew was in that really big market on the road not far from Mt. K. park entrance. looking back all durio we found were from in/near crocker range.

i still have not found my notes, so sorry about that.  i may be going again in summer.  The only problem with fruit lovers traveling in the heat is you dont know what is the exact cause of the every-5-minute-bathroom-break.  Summers kill me, any idea what would be best time for many cool new fruit?

i local nursery in borneo.  tomorrow i will walk out and see if there was a variety name.

I dont really fertilize.  i heavily mulch and compost.  other fruit like citrus, mango, cashew, golden fruit, annona, wax apple etc all fruit ok in the same soil.

they are in full sun and i think they are abotu 7-8' now.  they do ahve soem grass adn weeds around the ground, but thats about it.

I live in far south Taiwan, climate like hawaii with more rain in summer and less in winter.

I bought 4 foot trees about 4-5 years ago and planted them in the ground, where they have grown to about 7 feet and do nothing else.

Anyone know what triggers them to fruit?  they were cuttings from mature trees and the grower, whom i know to be very well educated on them, says 1-2 years until i get fruit, but still none.

The only thing i can think of is they may need a dry spell, but i have worked up my soil so that it never dries.  this year at its worst the loose top soil/organic material mat got dry.

I am really not sure what species i have, i can take pictures if it would help.

There are farms around here and even potted plants in nurseries are getting fruit....

Any thoughts?

we grow lots of this, i was just transplanting some seedling last night.  very easy only slow.

they like heat, 50% shade and high humidity.  you can germinate them in slightly moist vermiculite/sphagnum if climate is tricky, once they sprout they are pretty easy to care for.

fresh seeds to germ take 3+ weeks, can take over 6 months.  cool temps is one of the biggest things that slow them down, and also germ % drops rapidly after a while.

seeds stay fresh, if you are buying seeds, get them sent in some moist sphagnum or something.

2-3 years minimum until you see fruit in my experience.

We get to try all these new interesting fruit!  5 types of durian, I was very happy.

Here are pics and things i think they may be.  Any names you can help?

Artocarpus sp.


Artocarpus   Very stinky!


Durio zibethinus



Durio sp. 1  reddish skin, flesh like commercial sweet types.



Nephelium sp. ?   Like pulusan but different skin than we have had in other places.


Durio sp. 2


Santol?


Rollinia sp or Annona?

hehe, i post this in wrong forum.

I do this with cactus, very easy (not at all fruit related).

With leafy plants it more difficult, but why cannot?  Worst case scenario you do it over a certain time frame.  graft stock to scion 1, few months later to scion 2 etc.   depending on what you are grafting and your seasons.

 I have not try but i can see this being easy especially with approach grafting is time is on your side.

Sorry i mean to post elsewhere, not in this thread.  sorry

One thing i suggest for anyone breeding Hylcoereus and the like would be try to reduce the sepal (?) size.  the leaf like structures on fruit, sorry my terminology is terrible.  Not at expense of anything else, but as an aside as it will surely make shipping costs higher for export and i also wonder if it perhaps causes more rapid dehydration of the fruit because more surface area (just a theory).  I also note some countries tend to have very thin skinned dragon fruit.  i like it for eating, but they also seem to get damage far easier.

Many cactus have tasty fruit.  I feel this likely because birds, rodents and ants are huge helpers to disperse seeds.  But for production of a table fruit, most cannot be used due to slow growth or not suitable for environments. 

I think some key genera that are fast, tough and have large/good fruit are Cereus, Acanthocereus, Echinopsis, Opuntia, Harrisia, Hylcoereus/Selenicereus, Epiphyllum and things along those lines.

Other problem is with some species/genera the fruit is spiny.  Acanthocereus has great fruit that could be bread bigger and is easy to grow than dragon fruit, but the spines on them are very bad.

Also a lot of cactus fruit that is good and sold in markets where its native are only there because they are wild.  Growing up Stenocereus or Myrtillocactus for the goal of making money on the fruit would not be possible at all due to speed, quantity, then market.

Opuntia is great but loses on big hard seeds.  Thats why Hylocereus i think so popular, seeds are easy to chew.  So thinking tropical vines/epiphytes are probably best to look into.  Epiphyllum, Hylo/steno, Harrisia, Acanthocereus etc.

Other plants like Corypantha stay small and dont produce much.  They are also somewhat slow.  Ferocactus might be a possibility but to be honest i dont remember ever trying their fruit.  Most cactus seed though are too hard to chew comfortably.  Hylocereus happens to have nice thin weak seed coats to make eating easy.

For people growing in California and adjacent areas where cactus landscaping is common.  There is a lot of Cereus species and Trichocereus pachanoi around.  It would be easy to source and try the fruit, but none stack up to dragon fruit, at least yet.


I think for tropical wet climates Acanthocereus, Hylocereus, Selenicereus, Harrisia, Cereus and Opuntia are the best suited.  At least that i have try.

Irwin = Iwen, sometimes spelled Aiwen.

Yuwen is not Iwen / Aiwen.  I did some looking into all this a few months ago.  as squam said, its a cross between Irwin and another Chinese variety called Chinghuang.

And i think its possible that Chinghuang is the same as Jin Hwang, or sometimes as Gin huang.  aka as the Golden Queen.

if this is all true, the Yuwen is a hybrid of Irwin and Golden Queen.

Another hybrid has been developed, where Yuwen have taken its color traits from Irwin, this other variety  seems to have taken its appearance from the Golden Queen ( Jin Huang ). called Summer Snow.

thanks for clearing it up!

to clear some confusion on the Chinese.

 I=Ai. 
Ching = Jin = Gin
huang = Hwang

Your names "Chinghuang/Jin Hwang/Gin huang  are indeed all the same, just different pinyin/bastardization.  It is very common.  Sometimes a single town will have road signs with 4 different spellings.  Big cities even.  Its something that the gov is starting to realize, but it will always be a bad system because the languages sometimes dont have each others sound.  Like Yu in Yuwen, the Yu is not in the English language and can be very difficult for native English speakers to even try and copy right.  Just in case anyone wanted to know

On the Iwen/Yuwen front here.  There are no winter mango in Taiwan except "original" which they grow as big trees and are just old time mangoes.  they also eat them green a lot.  yellow ones, which are small, are just becoming available now from 2 weeks ago.  Green ones since new year.  better varieties are all in full flower right now.

the "Chinghuang" or Golden Queen I also have flowering now.

the color of iwen/yuwen varies because there are lots of different Yuwen to choose from which are recorded and sold to farmers for grafting.  every year new ones come out, i will take photos and show you here if any interest.  usually though i find Yuwen here more pink.  yellow-pink.  long like golden queen 20-30cm and very wide and VERY thick.  that why it so popular here because fruit flesh is very very deep from the seed.  But they are usually in market from about late May i think.

We collect lots of seeds when we are in Philippines and they are now all sprouting roots.  looking where they are from i am thinking they might like a well drained soil with lots of sand/pumice?

But would like input on what you folks grow your cashew seedlings in.

I believe is Anacardium occidentale.

still early, tap roots are still about 1-4cm long.