I went to the supermarket this morning and noticed how the citrus is laid out. My local supermarket has around 15 to 25 varieties at any one time all laid out in neat rows. They change around varieties regularly. It is totally different from the haphazard nature of the local markets.It would be interesting to see what citrus is on offer in supermarkets in various places.

The names given to Passiflora edulis flavicarpa locally are a bit unusual. They are given names from other places even if they have been selected crossed and bred for decades. Panamas are local types that come in yellow and red/purple forms and it has become a bi word for extra sweet types with almost no acidity. ones that are not yellow had some standard edulis crossed in at some stage in the past. Panamas are a group rather than a single variety these days such has been the crossing in back yards. African yellows are very sweet and musky. is a large and very sweet new variety bred from Panama red. Lilikoi seems as a term seems to be more and more referring to sour yellow flavicarpas not just Hawaiian in origin.
While edulis has had over 100 years of selection and breeding with several southern Australian types claimed to be worlds best the richness and complexity of taste and very low acidity seems to have many flavicarpas way ahead of any edulis in the desirability stakes.
This week I tried a red flavicarpa selection from Cooktown that was rather like a 3 sided pyramid in shape and I was advised that a private grower spent 30 years selecting and crossing to get this line. The one I sampled was fantastic being sweet and richly flavoured. My prized red flavicarpa is the offspring of the best tasting flavicarpa I could find after trying 100s of fruit.My standard panama pales by comparison.

Below is my one that I ate today and possibly is the last fruit of the crop.I just cant pick which is better but they do taste disinctively different and are the 2 best passionfruit I ever tried.

My jaboticabas flower and fruit more in Summer and those old enough to fruit seem to have several crops a year. Scarlet fruits almost continually but not heavily for each fruiting flush. I will show pics of 3 sabaras, a grimal and a red hybrid.


This sabara just has a light flowering


This sabara has a heavy flowering flush.


The flowers are festooned on the sabara here.



The grimal has buds for flowers.


The red hybrid has flowers and small fruit.

I had 2 kepel trees that I planted too close to the house once and so were chopped down. They were more vigorous than expected and many still have the experience of them being slow growing. My ones just began fruiting when they volunteered for mulch patrol. Two large trees in a nearby park are fruiting and here is a closer look. They aren't too bad really. The taste is hard to describe a bit like fruity caramel and perhaps closest to sapodilla but denser, smoother and not as sweet. Big ones have 4 seeds and are a bit over 150g.


The flesh yield is perhaps around 35%.

The trees are very attractive with colourful new growth like the finest Theobromas.

In Australia the standard soursops are labelled as Cuban Fibreless or don't have labels. Cuban Fibreless is an old Cuban variety and perhaps should be called Cuban Fiber as it is fibrous with cotton wool like flesh, perhaps a little too much sourness and plenty of seeds. The other un-named Australian selections are fairly similar.

I currently have a fruiting Arusha (thanks Soren) and a fruiting Lisa from Recife (thanks Mangaba). My Whitman's Fiberless originally from Coconuts tree and Morado (the giant type) are yet to fruit. Last week I also  saw the golden soursop which some people are fussing about and ate some Whitman Fiberless seedling fruit that came via Whitman to Kamerunga research station and a heavier producing seedling of this tree was grafted.

So how would I rate the ones I have eaten?
Cuban Fiberless is poor being too fibrous and not sweet enough.It is hard to consume large amounts.
Lisa/Recife is good being sweeter and less fibrous than Cuban fibreless and it also has a richer ore pleasant taste nd they are productive,
Arusha is very good much like Lisa but a little better with a slight pineapple taste present.

Whitman seedling via Kamerunga is very good and the lack of fiber makes it appealing. The taste is very good but maybe Arusha shades it in that department.
Whitman (Coconut) reported to be very good on this forum and when my seedling fruits I will be able to give an account.
Golden Soursop is striking in appearance and reported to be of very good quality but I cant as yet give a personal account.
 

At 14 feet up the flying foxes gave their seal of approval to this Arusha soursop.


The Whitman via Kamerung doesn't look fancy on the outside.


That handsome paw is behind a young golden soursop which is canary yellow in 'life'.

A few trees in my yard have volunteered for mulch patrol and left me with space for new trees. I seem to have lots of choices for the few spots I have. I want to plant either paulista,z4 or coronata restingia jaboticaba but am not sure which is best. I want to plant an Annona maybe a big orange or red sugar apple, soncoya or if Duguetias are small enough and have good enough fruit one of those. I have a choice of good chempadaks and maybe one of those.
A chum who grows fruit and who is going away to a cooler climate has offered some plants that I can have. Amongst his impressive collection is Chysophyllum imperial as in the picture above and Alphonsea maingayi. I am concerned that I am too warm for C.imperiale ,its fruit are not that good, they get too big and they have a long juvenile period. I don't know much about Alphonsea maingayi and my main concern is tree size and that it isn't monoeicious.Can anyone advise on this?

Growing citrus in my area is quite a challenge with lots of insect pests let alone avian ones like cockatoos.Numerous fruit piercing moth species attack my mandarins and oranges before they ripen. The foliage of trees is consumed by several species of large phasmids, whopping Valanga irregularis grasshoppers and even emperor moths. The following black and white (with bits of red and blue) swallowtail butterflies have their caterpillars on citrus in my district.

Dainty swallowtail, Papilio anactus (WS Macleay, 1826)
Orchard swallowtail, Papilio aegeus (Donovan, 1805)
Ambrax swallowtail, Papilio ambrax (Boisduval, 1832)
Fuscus swallowtail, Papilio fuscus (Goeze, 1779)
Chequered swallowtail, Papilio demoleus (Linnaeus, 1758)

The smaller aphids,and sucking bugs also give me grief at times but fruit flies and leaf miners are leaving the fruit and trees alone. Pinks disease is a constant fungal issue but we are talking insects now. Maybe may area and location are prone to insects pests and I do like butterflies. Are other people finding their citrus trees and fruit on the menu of insects a little too much? 

I got a plant from the market and received some fruit which a Brisbane grower gave to another forum member in Cairns who passed them on to me. Mt White Limes sure look much like fingerlimes but occur naturally around 2000km north of where finerlimes naturally occur. Mt White limes live in remote monsoon forests of Cape York Peninsula and further afield. They do have vesicles perhaps less developed than fingerlimes and the seeds are tiny being flattened discs around 2mm long.

I have been seeing this large knobbly variety of atemoya in the markets lately and have tries it.It has few seeds unlike AP and Gefner and it sweeter and better quality than those. This one is well over 2kg and they get at least double that size with 1kg to around 3kg seeming to be pretty standard. Pink's Mammoths do get much larger but those in the markets are not the whoppers and Pink's Mammoth is mis-shapen and almost flakey inside such as in the broken apart one below and an intact one on the scale.





Could this be a new child of Pink's Mammoth or does someone recognise its variety? Maybe it is just new to my area.When I chop it open I will post a pic.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-12/australian-native-bunya-nuts-great-camp-food-and-bush-tucker/9751602

It is believed dinosaurs used to eat the cones whole.There is a big season every 3 years and these huge trees planted around the towns and cities have had their cones wasted for such a long time. Bunya nut trees are one of the most strikingly impressive pine trees as well.

Today I went around a few places looking for safu.


Picked up a twisted chempadak from a friend on the way.


Got a mammoth and a Mt white Lime (Citrus garrawayae)  from the market.

Went to the 'safu' park and no safu on the trees bit there were other things to see.


Cant climb up the big matisia tree to get these.


Or this tree.
Saw a big canistel variety and 2 mystery canistel like Pouterias






An Annons padulosa from my brothers tree today. Or is that A,paludosa?


Went to a friends place but his safu had no fruit so came home and consoled myself with limberlost durian from my tree.

 On a crazy rainy day in Cairns I went with a couple of chums to the Innisfail Feast of the Senses today where the rain was lighter/Anyway, there were fruit displays of rare fruit including lots of durians,mangosteens.abiu.pulusan.chempadak and other tropical fruits that you would expect. A great day was had by all and it was great to see the Fruit Forest Farm people doing a roaring trade in rare tropical fruit trees and fruit in general. Unfortunately I was unable to get any fruit or seeds that I was really after.