What info do we have about grafting compatibility between these American Garcinias? Any chance of grafting G. vleerackerii or G. humilis onto G. intermedia? Has anybody successfully grafted G. vleerackerii onto G. humilis yet?

As for races. Races in a species are types that breed true. Take humans there is from my schooling and only to illsutrate : Negro, Caucasian, Asian. If aa Negro mating prodced occasionally white or Asian it wouold not be a race same if whites matingproduced at times Negro.

With plant species it is the same. Take camphor there are four chemical races. These breed true. If on the other hand the safrol dominant race produced camphor dominat it would not be a race.

It's not clear whether you were citing those racial concepts as a hypothetical example of how race could be defined or you actually believe they are real, so I'll give you the benefit of doubt, but it's worth clarifying that human racial taxonomy along those lines is as obsolete, absurd and thoroughly debunked as phlogiston theory or Noah's ark. While there is a nuanced, technical debate among experts whether something like race exists within the human species (as clades/populations/etc), to the extent they do they are not even remotely similar to the 3 categories you cite. In no way, shape or form is there a Negro or Asian race, and no geneticist of the past few decades would take that idea seriously.

As the illustration is so wildly removed from reality, its analogy with plants offers no insight.

I attended the Hilo screening of this film last weekend and it was certainly enjoyable in the better-than-nothing sense since the topic is so near and dear to me as a daily consumer of this incredible delicious fruit, but don't get your hopes up. While it's not a facepalm disaster like that Fruit Hunters film, it's an awkwardly conceived, dilletantish effort that wastes its curiously short runtime on a lot of fluffy and tangential content and barely scratches the surface of breadfruit in its immensity. Its only redeeming quality is a nice (but tiny) snapshot of breadfruit from a Hawaiian cultural perspective, with a handful of awesome people like Jerry Konanui given a chance to express themselves in a beautiful way. The same filmmaker also screened his great documentary about a family in an epic valley on Molokai struggling to preserve their beautiful land and tradition in the wake of modernization/colonialization/etc. I think everyone in the audience got filled up with great vibes and warm emotions from both films.

I would say E. uniflora is totally unsuited to usage as a windbreak because they just don't get very tall. I know a tree that is at least 60 years old and it's only about 5m tall. Similarly, M. glazioviana is very bushy and fairly short. On the other hand, E. brasiliensis can be monsters and you'll certainly make a lot of avian friends and have a vast nursery of seedlings available at all times!

In addition to Inga, some of the trees I'm tentatively planning to use for edible windbreaks and strip forests because they would drop food on the ground (for humans, fowl, pigs, etc) and get very tall: Artocarpus camansi, Artocarpus heterophyllus, Artocarpus integer, Macadamia, Persea Americana, Gnetum gnemon, Lecythis zabucajo, Canarium ovatum, Pouteria sapota. Maybe some Mangifera and Spondias dulcis too. 

Some pics and notes on Pouteria torta from one particular tree in the South Hilo district of Hawai'i island around 100m elevation.



Here's the tree with its proud papa, my friend Kim. It was probably planted less than 10 years ago, exact age unknown. Kim said he might've gotten the seed from Oscar, but he doesn't remember for sure. It's been fruiting for several years. Kim told me that when it was really small somebody ran over it with a lawn mower and it was reduced to almost nothing, but it grew back into a beautiful, productive tree.



It fruits twice a year I think. This current fruiting is maybe about 200 fruits.



The outside has a sparse layer of very soft fuzz that can be easily washed off or ignored.



The size of the fruits vary by about 1cm in diameter. This sampling of fruit is representative of the largest size. These 11 fruits ranged from 48mm to 56mm in diameter.



So far I've seen exactly one seed in every fruit. The seeds are about 25mm in length typically. The anomalous small one in this pictured batch came from one of the larger fruits. A negligibly small amount of flesh sticks to the seed, just like abiu, and quite unlike the problematic cases like jaboticaba, santol, pulasan, etc.

The flavor is fantastic, an elite fruit very similar to Pouteria caimito and Chrysophyllum caimito, very sweet, delicate, zero sourness. A small bit of latex on the lips is a trivial nuisance, slightly worse than a typical abiu. Whereas an abiu has a mostly gelatinous texture, the torta is a bit spongy and more like C. caimito. Sometimes I wonder if the flavor is even better than abiu. I don't identify a caramel flavor like abiu, but it's hard to pin down those subtle sensations. Unlike abiu, the boundary between tasty flesh and unappealing rind is slightly murky, so I occasionally scrape a little bit of rind with my spoon. It's mildly bitter, but not unpleasant at all, and not anything like the meal-destroying foulness of accidentally ingested slivers of mangosteen rind.

The fruit show very little damage from fruit flies. There are some abiu trees a few hundred meters away that get ravaged by fruit flies. The shelf life is long, just like abiu. They can sit in the fridge for a few weeks in excellent condition.

Where did you try cannonball fruit? Its one of the top fruits that I would like to try. Any advice on how to eat it properly? I love bizarre looking fruits and that one certainly fits that bill.

There are a few large, fruiting cannonball trees on this island, Hawai'i. I found some info on the internet saying it was edible and needs to ripen for a while and so on, but I only tried eating two fruits and gave up. The first was freshly fallen from the tree and quite unripe. The oxalates wrecked my mouth for a few hours. The second fruit I let ripen for maybe 3 weeks and I can't offer any advice other than only eating a tiny piece!

My experience with a ~6m tree in Hawai'i (wet climate, low elevation) is that it makes a lot of fruit, the seeds germinate quickly and the fruit is very delicious, very sweet, golf ball size and similar to the non-gelatinous part of abiu--more milky and spongey than abiu. I'm planning to plant a few.

The noni you ate looks rather different than the noni here in Hawai'i. They are typically much bigger than yours and the flesh color is much lighter. I suspect the ones here are much milder in flavor than in, say, Thailand, partly because I've read that the varieties here have much less of the putative medicinal component. I think they are pleasant and refreshing in small quantities. They are fairly sweet when fully ripe. When I happen across a tree with ripe fruit, I typically eat maybe one quarter of a fruit and enjoy it before the mild burning or bitter flavors become distracting.

The ume you ate looked totally unripe. I've eaten ripe raw ume and it's a sour, pungent fruit, but still edible and not offensive. They are sold green for making umeboshi, which is another example of something that's quite tasty in small quantities or diluted with other foods, no different than many pungent Indian pickles that are very popular. I wouldn't pop a whole umeboshi in my mouth, but a sliver of one is a sublime sensation.

It's easy to empathize with your chempedak experiences. I've only had it from 3 different trees, but I found it extremely delicious each time, possibly a top 10 favorite fruit, although I prefer jackfruit. As much as I enjoy it, I agree it's extremely funky. It's the only fruit I don't like to leave sitting around on the kitchen counter all day. I like the smell, but prolonged exposure to it is overwhelming. On the other hand, I routinely leave durians sitting around on the kitchen counter for days and barely notice the smell.

The worst fruit I've tried is cannonball. I let it ripen for a few weeks--the smell is really intense too--and I was confident it was ripe but the oxalic acid taste was still too strong to enjoy it. There is a sweet creamy flavor in there, but overall its edibility is questionable. I'd put bilimbi in the worst 10, but only because I basically like everything and I only like it a little bit. The flavor is okay, kinda boring, but it's so extremely sour that I usually avoid it eating it out of hand. Similarly, rambai makes my worst 10 because even though the sourness is easily tolerable, the other flavors are too boring and bland to balance it out. I've tasted it from 3 different trees and I'm sure I had it at optimal ripeness and a reasonable sweet/sour balance, but I would generally prefer a sweet, cheesy noni over a rambai.

Now that puts the "art" back into "harharticulture".

I'm new to the forum and fairly new to exploring fruit, so this thread was fun to read. Maybe it would be fun to have a "bottom 5" list thread too! I'll throw my ranked top 10 into the ring. It's just based on flavor/pleasure, no other criteria. I debated whether to include medium/old coconut in my top 10 because it's so hard to compare that amazing perfect mild flavor with the very special sweeter and stronger flavors of other fruits.

01. pitanga (Generally I've found red varieties equal to or better than black varieties contrary to common wisdom. I just can't imagine a more perfectly delicious fruit! But I have yet to taste the rare Eugenias.)
02. durian
03. loquat
04. jackfruit
05. certain types of banana: namwah, kru, manzano, popo'ulu, fe'i, Brazilian
06. purple caimito
07. syzygium jambos
08. grumichama
09. marang
10. salak