Once a new fruit variety becomes repeatedly inbred over several generations, it becomes stable. This was much more common in old times obviously than modern hybrids.

I don't know much about the history of eating apples but I expect the oldest apple varieties are simply the best varieties available at the time grafting was discovered.

Crabapples had long grown wild and been cultivated in Europe, but were used primarily for cooking. It was not until larger apples arrived from the Northwestern mountain desert region of China that the two were able to be interbred into modern apple varieties. There's a theory that the reason fruits of different species (such as pomegranate) are so large in this region is because large mammal species used to inhabit this area of the world in prehistoric times, as it was fertile grass plains.

Like a color palette, from just a handful of original citrus species has resulted all sorts of new families, each with their own unique character.

Repeatedly backcrossing a pomelo with mandarin resulted in the common Orange. And the flavor is not quite the same as either of its original ancestors. All that selective inbreeding eliminated nuances in flavor and resulted in high levels of Valencene.
Cross an Orange again with a tangerine (mandarin) and you get a Tangor.

When a Pomelo that had been brought to Jamaica inadvertently hybridized with Orange and the resulting offspring, which had small sour fruits that grew in clusters like grapes, began spreading in the wild, that was the start of the lineage that today is known as grapefruit. And grapefruit, while similar to pomelo in many respects, also has its own unique flavor differences. It developed very high levels of the pungent sweet compound thioterpineol, the most characteristic component of grapefruit aroma.

Cross a grapefruit with a mandarin and you get a Tangelo (which really does taste like a cross between mandarin and pomelo).
Cross a tangelo with a pomelo again and you get a Tangelolo.
These are all just varying combinations on a spectrum between mandarin and pomelo, yet each family is unique and has its own taste.
Cocktail Grapefruit was a hybrid between grapefruit and mandarin, but is still considered a grapefruit.
And what if you cross a grapefruit with a pomelo? Oro Blanco is conveniently easy to categorize as a grapefruit because its pomelo parent happened to be Siamese Sweet, which did not have much flavor of its own to contribute. So Oro Blanco mostly takes on the grapefruit flavor of its Duncan parent.

There are so many potential combinations. What other new families could be possible?

Plan out a curvy network of paths. Not that you have to build any path but just mark out where you want the walking areas to be. Then imagine walking along those paths and what trees you want to be where. You can make individualized areas. Perhaps brush up on landscape architecture, or if that's really not your thing you might consider the possibility of hiring a consultant to help give you some ideas of how to lay it out.

Having some contrast between denser forest and more open flat areas can also make it more ergonomical and visually appealing. Consider some permaculture ideas too, like swales on a slope.
What you are building is sometimes called a "food forest". That's something else you can research.

Anyone here from Malaysia who can buy Manggis Masta (Master Mangosteen) and send me seeds?
Willing to pay

I'll let you know in 2 years. I have a whole bunch of very cold-hardy varieties in my little collection. Not Ichang papeda, but I believe most of them do have cold-hardy papeda going back in their ancestry. When they become more established I was thinking about sending out seeds and letting other citrus hobbyists find out what types of fruits they produce. Then maybe we could find interesting new varieties without me having to sprout the seeds and take care of all those trees myself. It's really luck of the draw what genes the seeds will get.

What type of discount could you give on 40 seeds?

A few plants from my little collection


Yuzu in ground


the middle one in the ground is an ordinary Satsuma, the one on the left is a Bloomsweet grapefruit, the one on the right (with the bag) is an Ichang lemon

these are in the PNW

Use a small sharp knife. Cut a slit down the flesh of the fruit (after it has been carefully peeled). With some care, slowly and delicately pull apart the two sides just enough to be able to remove the seed.

In China it is not uncommon to dry them. I have tried dried lychees and they do not really taste anything like the fresh fruit unfortunately, not worth eating (but perhaps that's my personal opinion; I have a Chinese friend who eats them).

You can buy canned lychee that are borderline okay when put in lychee juice and eaten as a dessert. The flavor is a little off though, and the texture is slightly rubbery.

Frozen lychee are a little more difficult to enjoy than the fresh fruit because of difference in texture. I would say from experience they retain about 60-70 percent of the flavor of fresh lychee. The freezing process does seem to lock in the original fresh flavor, but the lychee almost immediately start going bad after being thawed and then the texture is not the best.

Lychee juice can be a good option, it is pasteurized inside a container and does not need to be kept refrigerated. The flavor depends to a great extent on the quality of the juice, cheaper brands add a lot of sugar and dilute the juice.

comparing morphological characteristics of similar Garcinia species, color of young leaf, mature leaf, flower, fruit, segment/aril, seed and latex for (A) G. hombroniana, (B) G. malaccensis, (C) G. mangostana, (D) G. celebica, (E) G. porrecta

source:  Phylogenetic Analysis of Mangosteen and its Relatives Based on Morphological and Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) Markers, Sulassih, Sobir and Santosa, for Tropical Horticulture Studies, Bogor Agricultural University, Jl Pajajaran Baranangsiang, Bogor, Indonesia

I'm using a red LED grow light (36 watts, 660 nanometer wavelength) and the little plants are in a large white plastic container covered with a large clear plastic garbage bag to hold in the moisture. There is also a small open container of water inside next to the plants to help make sure the humidity levels within the enclosure do not go down. Occasionally I take the plants outside in the sun, but only when the temperature is above 70 °F, and for no more than 2½ hours at a time. (This is in the Pacific Northwest and right now the air temperatures are still pretty cool and fairly humid, there is no way I'd expose these young plants to any amount of full sun if they were in Southern California)

When I do take them outside, I always make sure to give them just a little bit of water before and right after to make sure the soil is moist. I do not plan on taking them outside later in the summer when the outside air starts becoming drier. 70 degrees is still fairly cool, but at 80 degrees I think there would be much more of a risk of drying out in the sun. Although it's true mangosteen likes higher temperatures, that is only if humidity levels are very high. I read the optimal minimum temperature for growing mangosteen starts at 77 °F. I think the small plants will grow faster in more light, but this is only assuming there is enough soil moisture and constant humidity to prevent them from drying out. Since these optimal conditions usually don't exist, I think that is the reason why small mangosteen plants usually cannot handle high levels of light.

Buah Mesta (Garcinia mangoestana) is a special cultivar of mangosteen that is believed to originate from Temerloh, Pahang, in peninsular Malaysia. It is now being propagated commercially by a few growers. Buah Mesta has some differences from standard mangosteen (Manggis) in terms of several morphological characteristics.



According to commercial mesta entrepreneur Mr. Shuabib from Kg Paya Pasir, Maran, Pahang, mesta trees are usually slightly smaller and lower than regular mangosteen trees. Generally there are a greater number of branches on the tree. Mesta fruit are a little bit more oval shaped with a pointy tapering end under them; not a stocky round shape like regular mangosteen.

When looking inside the fruits, it is almost uniformly commented that mesta has nothing like the large seeds found in regular mangosteen. Typically it has 6 cloves of fresh white substance with a very sweet taste. Most special about this fruit is it only has a little resin which can stain your hands or clothes, even from freshly picked fruit. (The resin from a mangosteen fruit is yellow)

Mesta is harvested from the orchards in Maran when the season arrives, and fetches a slightly higher price, despite the season usually being the same as the harvest for ordinary mangosteen. Mesta fruit in 2016 began to ripen in July and were sold at a farm price of around RM 8.00 per kg compared with regular mangosteen at around Rm 4.00 - 5.00 per kg. Mesta fruit is highly favored by those who have purchased it.

Mesta in terms of form generally resembles the overall form of standard mangosteen. If one is less familiar with the particular differences of Mesta, they need to look carefully at the shape of the fruit first. Mesta fruit is more oval-shaped, with a nose at the bottom, and have stacks of white filling inside which are uniform in size and with less seeds. In contrast, standard mangosteen fruit has a mainly flat round shape underneath, and there tend to be large white segments, which contain seeds, next to smaller more flattened segments. The edible segments of flesh inside Mesta are uniform in size.




("bentuk" just means shape)



During the growing season Mesta trees are very uniform and dense in fruit, until a few branches break. This is one of the features of a Mesta tree, at 4 years old there will be a lot of fruit that causes broken branches. Regular mangosteen trees have less cases of branch breakage.

Another feature of Mesta can be found at the bottom of the fruit. There are 6 (sometimes 7) petals on the button, whereas regular mangosteen has 5.



Mesta also has a bit larger brownish-green petals on the top where the stalk comes out, between 1-2cm depending on the size of the fruit.



For those who want to eat the Mesta variety of mangosteen, you can visit Maran, Temerloh, Raub, Lipis, or Jeranut, because the area is reported to have mesta tree planting. The trees in this area can bear fruit after 4 years of growth by merging seedlings, grafting them together into a single tree trunk.

translated from Malay
original article written by M. Anem, senior agronomist at Bukit Goh Agricultural Center, Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia

original source: http://animhosnan.blogspot.com/2016/08/mesta-buah-berharga.html?m=1

mangosteen seedlings just arrived. so excited!