I don't have a digital camera.

Looks like my cambuca is flowering...

bad news is that it's flowering like a eugenia.  Candolleana or something like it.

Since I'd like to regularly eat muscadines...

Grimals only sort of taste like muscadines--the taste is lighter and more delicate.  Not as sweet as a muscadine can be.

While muscadines have only a tough skin, Grimals have a resinous skin, with some sandpapery quality to it.  Grimals mostly have some juicy pulp with clumps of fiberous pulp, and a mildly cling seed that can be sucked for flavor awhile.  Muscadines, however, have a juicy outer pulp and a rubbery inner pulp with seeds.

I suspect that most people will prefer Grimals to muscadines because it's a bit easier to eat, and the flavor isn't strong to the point of funk.

That's the way mine looks (when it was smaller), and the way I remember Frankie's cambucas back in '01.

Honestly, I think aside from vexator, cambuca is relatively easy to tell.  Vexator leaves droop a lot more.  P. rivalris has a different leaf shape.

Pawpaws do not genuinely taste like bananas.

They generally taste like a no-acid, higher fat cherimoya with more flavor emphasis on orange--sweet potatoes, pumpkin, muskmelon, mango, heavier tropically taste elements like that.  I've heard Cornus kousa fruit is also similar in taste.

While I have not tried the fruit myself, my working assumption is that for practical purposes, the higher quality fruits are basically a very poor man's durian.

Mine is at least 15yo, red bark, has flowered at ~4 years without result as a small, stressed plant.  Never since, so far.

Long way from any joy, but I have a Maria's Joy and a Susquehanna planted earlier this spring...

Ed, what would you say the difference was between Susquehanna and Wabash in terms of flavor?

Oscar, my bet is on malnutrition plus agricultural spraying--specifically paraquat (probably in combination with whatever toxic experience with annona).  One of the things that really makes me think something is off, is the focus on what are really small islands.  Guadalupe, but not Dominican Republic, or Costa Rica, or Columbia?  Kii peninsula?  Why New Caledonia instead of Australia?  That makes for a thought that the common factor has to do with small amounts of arable and livable land, and so people are living next to highly intensive agriculture.

I cited my background so as to suggest that I am not completely unfamiliar with the literature.  I am not saying that I am an expert.

Part of what gets mine, and plenty of other people's goat, is the consistent appeal to authority, when there are not authoritative studies to appeal to, not truly so.  And then act as if we're in denial.  Dud(ettes), everyone here knows!  This site is mainly full of people who know A LOT about this sort of thing!  You can't simply state something about how we have to accept that soursops are dangerous.  Because we know.  Plenty of people have been talking about it for a decade plus years now.  The issue isn't that we don't appreciate the dangers, or what the studies say.  The issue is the number of tropical fruits that do NOT have toxin issues are a pretty strong minority!  I mean, for example, you shouldn't drink scotch while eating durians.  Unless we're talking about highly domesticated fruits like figs, or fruits with really simple appeal, like pitaya, most everything else tropical will build up, or have toxin issues if you eat a lot of them.  There is a pretty dang good chance that something more complicated than simply eating lots of soursop (or drinking tisane) is causing said atypical Parkinson's, and the rather dramatic toxic nature of acetogenins overstates the actual risk profile.  We haven't even considered whether the benefits outweigh the risks--soursop tisane is perhaps cheap and dangerous, but it may well work for poor people, and Parkinsons is just the long term cost, generally of being poor.

Hello again, KarenRei...

First off, I'm not LakeSuperior or any of that sort of obnoxious pseudorationalist git...

That means:

1)  I accept that annonacae fruits have poison in them.

2)  I accept that a high enough consumption means that we are poisoned by them.

My problem is that the concern for anonacae fruits is disproportionate to the actual risks, and that the scientific studies to date are a lot weaker than you seem to understand.  There are routine qualifiers, like in the pawpaw paper, making clear that critical questions like bioavailability from actual pawpaw consumption is not fully answered.  Moreover, *compared to other tropical fruits and less domesticated fruits*, anonacae may well not be an outlier in terms of dangerous consumption, and that we're overseeing the clear analogies to obviously poisonous substances, with easy causation established.

Moreover, all of the studies cited are simply way too small, and with way little discrimination, epidemiological-wise.

The conclusion of the best work, from which you cited that image goes like this:
The clinical, neuropsychological and neuroradiological analysis of Gd-PSP and Gd-PDC patients suggests that these two groups cannot be confounded with Parkinson's disease and, except for the oculomotor signs, cannot be distinguished from each other. This is confirmed by correlation with the consumption of annonaceous products, which is as low in Parkinson's disease patients as in controls, but equally high in the Gd-PSP and Gd-PDC groups, although there was a tendency for Gd-PDC patients to have consumed more than the Gd-PSP patients. It should be noted, however, that about 50% of the atypical patients were not heavy consumers of annonaceaous products, suggesting that other factors, environmental or genetic, might affect the vulnerability of patients to the neurotoxins in Annonaceae. In addition, a certain number of control patients (n = 22) fell into the category of high consumers, and might constitute a group at risk for the development of atypical parkinsonism. This study has reinforced the hypothesis that atypical parkinsonism in Guadeloupe may be related to an alimentary toxin, but prospective longitudinal studies are needed to clarify this point, which is very important not only for scientific reasons, but also for public health. Our detailed clinical, neuropsychological and neuroradiological analysis of this form of parkinsonism provides criteria for the diagnosis of this disease in other populations potentially at risk.

And this was also true of another study I found (but could only read the abstract of) which concluded that anonacae consumption is not necessarily strongly-linked to atypical Parkinson.

Moreover, from the cited image, what high consumption meant was effectively normed at one fruit/cup of fruit juice a day for ten years, and high consumption is like double that.  Step back for a sec.  How many people, given adequate means, will eat that much of a single fruit every day?  That makes for wondering whether selecting for consumption is also selection for other factors.  Also, few people with means and access to a global marketplace, even if they totally LOOOVE soursop, are going to manage to consume that much for that long, in the face of the rest of the delicacies the world offers.

Lastly, again, a tremendous number of tropical products are really rather toxic if you let yourself think that way.  I mean, are you going to be super cautious about white sapote?  How about nutmegs or cashew apples?  Are you going to take the risk of consuming that Mamey?  The game is basically the same as it is with everything else, including beer, etc.  In moderation, prepared properly.

**snort**

Do you see a lot of people with Parkingson's down in the Andes?

In the Caribbean?

We grow and eat a lot of things that are toxic in real quantity--like tuna, brazil nuts, etc.  We've had such silliness with panics over grenadine, kava, etc.  Some of the domesticated crops are so domesticated and prep so well known, that we forget how toxic they can be, e.g., potatoes.  Other crops are quite widely known to be dangerous, and are very much relished, with careful prep, like akees.  The actual dangers in our food generally doesn't come from all the chem warfare that plant use to keep to their life-cycle, but from industrialization with as little due consideration to public welfare as possible.

Seriously, Aspartame is much more dangerous--with actual clear links, and widespread, year-round daily consumption.

Annonacae members spend too much time and effort at making fruits as delicious as possible, in the old style like durians, with lots of fats and proteins, to be poisoning any animal that might spread its seeds.  Fat and protein are extremely expensive value proposition for plants.

Seriously, let's have just a little less tolerance for food purity trolling.  This thing about acetogins have been rolling around for about a decade, now.  It's ultimately only a *potential* issue for people who drink a lot of badly processed soursop juice.  Few people are ever going to eat enough fruit otherwise, to have problems.  Don't eat under-ripe fruit, still chem-war zone.  Don't eat overripe fruit, breakdown of all those fatty esters, and rancid stuff causes issues with allergy and somewhat toxic byproducts.  Don't eat the seeds, and don't get too greedy about the stuff right under the skins.  While all that might look hard, we do this routinely for many, many agricultural products.  We can easily do it for cherimoyas and pawpaws, too.

I mentioned pawpaw leather.  Someone already tried that and wound up with allergic reaction/food poisoning.  If you're going to try and make it, be very careful and conservative in avoiding skin and seeds, and nibble carefully before consumption.