Hello all

though I share with you some pics of my Grumixamas.
this is the first time it gave me a decent harvest and in fact I believe that almost every single flower turned into a fruit.... this is a little phenomenon because Grumixamas are known to be finicky on fruit production... I've had other bushes that flowered a lot just to give me one or two fruits.... but this one is really productive







I'm not sure if this is the red or black variety... fruits turn almost black when properly ripe but the flesh is whitish so I'm guessing this is the red variety according to the photos on Lorenzi's book... but really I don't care about the variety as this fruit is probably one of the best tasting Eugenia fruits I have had so far... top of the rank together with calycinas, CoRG and Dwarf Black pitangas....
look how beautiful it gets when stripped out of it's skin

First times are always to remember and apparently 2015 will be a year to celebrate...
After the first fruits on my Myrciaria cuspidata (or Myrciaria sp.) as posted here before, I recently found another first timers on my GH...

These can probably be the first fruits of Eugenia klotzchiana (pera do Cerrado) to be born in Europe... just hope they can reach maturity and that the small branch can hold it without breaking off...





An this one can be the first European fruit for Campomanesia adamantium (or Campomanesia cambessedeana)



and this is my Campomanesia phaea (cambuci) in full flower for the first time... hopping for the first European borne fruits on this species.








If someone else wants to take my credit for these achievements please step forward and prove it!

and for all those who have been asking if it's possible to fruit these species is a pot... the answer is YES!

Hello all
I have very fresh calycina seeds now but on a very limited supply.
If anyone is interested on these seeds please PM me.
To those who asked for these seeds before (when out of season) please contact again now.
Payment by PayPal
Best regards to all
Miguel.pt

Hello all,

I've been interested in the American Beach plums (Prunus maritima) since I first read about it on the book " Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden" where Lee Reich seems very found of this species... but I never found or knew anyone growing this species in Europe so far...

I would like to know other opinions on this species ... does it really worth growing?... are the fruits good?... Is anyone here growing some selected varieties of this species ?... are they different enough compared to other common plums to deserve growing?... I know that they have smaller fruits compared to normal "Prunus domestica" plums but I do not see it as negative as I would like to have smaller plums on my collection...

Anyone here interested in trade some cuttings/scions of this species?... I have several plum rootstocks ready to be grafted I now it's time to do it...
I can trade for myrtaceae seeds or any other stuff I have... please PM if interested...thanks in advance...

I remember reading also about an even smaller American prunus fruit... Western sand cherry... Prunus besseyi is the name... any comments on this one are most welcome too.

Hello all

I have several "Cherry of the Rio Grande" and I have seen many others, but I have one that stands out giving me some really nice and bigger fruits than all others.
I keep wondering if this is the one they call the "giant" but my fruits seem fatter than those of the Lorenzi's book.

Does anyone here has photos of the Giant form fruits to compare? ... thank you in advance!

here are the photos...one of the fruits was specially big... the fruits could have stayed on the tree a little bit more but I had to harvest them because the damn birds were getting them all.... but they were already perfect taste-wise at this stage. 





The biggest one had 3 seeds

Hello all,
 
This weekend while visiting my parents I found these beautiful small pithayas there...
fruits seemed ripe so I collected and tasted a few... and they tasted great... all the family enjoyed... I've found these very sweet, sweeter than some other bigger pithayas I've tasted before, and they even leave a nice aftertaste on the mouth that persisted for hours...
 
Moreover the fruits were of a decent size, had no nasty thorns and they peeled very easily... I just see advantages here...
 
Funny thing is that this cactus seats there for as long as I remember (more than 30 years)... my parents always had it just for the nice/big white/yellow flowers...and the only occasion that I remember it to have had fruits was last year that I visited my parents when it had open flowers and I spent sometime hand pollinating several flowers with the pollen of another cactus but it only grew one single fruit... this year it has lots of fruits without any human intervention... I confirmed with my dad and he did nothing... maybe my last year hand pollination efforts triggered something here???
 
Anyone can help me to identify the correct species name?... anyone else knows these type of pithayas?

Hello all
 
Here is a very interesting book I've recently found on an "Antique Book Store" but only for Portuguese speakers/readers... it's a version of the book "Noticia do Brasil" de Gabriel Soares de Sousa, often mentioned on the literature as the first official report from the newly found Brazilian territories, more than 500 years ago... this book is just a volume of a bigger collection of books edited on 1989 all related to the Portuguese maritime voyages and discoveries during the XV and XVI centuries.
 
It's a text book about the report made from Gabriel Soares de Sousa describing everything new they were finding on Brasil... and the descriptions of the trees and fruits are particularly interesting for "rare fruit enthusiasts" like us...
 
The book store has several copies of this book so if anyone is interested please PM me... I'm not selling it... I'm just open for trades in case you have something of interest for me ( books, seeds, plants, etc...)

Hello all,

last year my A. tomentosa gave me just one single flower which did not set fruit...
This years it has several flowers and I would like to try to hand-pollinate to increase my chances... but these flowers are a lot different from normal A. cherimoya flowers and I've read about it being pollinated by some special beetles...
Questions are:
Anybody knows how these type of annona flowers should be hand-pollinated?
Should I consider the same 3 basic steps as on A. cherimoya flowers (collect polen during male stage, keep it overnight on the frige door and pollinate female parts following day)?
Do these flowers have the same separate male and female stages like other annonas do?
 
Please help!...flowers should open anytime soon so I don't have much time to decide what to do... thanks!

Hello all.

My Eug.involucrata is fruiting right now and I have one single tree fruiting so no others to compare...

My questions are:
Do you think I have here the normal version of the Cherry Rio Grande or could this be the giant form?... can someone post pics of fruits of the giant form to compare with mine?





Anyway if someone has seeds of the giant form available for trade I would like to try it.
Do you know if they came true from seed?

No doubt I am very happy with my tree and fruits... just curious if there can be even better ones.

thanks in advance
Miguel

Do you guys know this one?
In my humble opinion this is a must have Psidium spp. specially if you live on a colder area like I do... but apparently it's still very rare around even among collectors... at least I have not seen it discussed before here on the forum and there isn't much information online also...

Let me share some of my experience with this one to you all:
I think I first received seeds from Brazil of this species around 2007 or 2008 and they arrived only labeled as " Araçã roxo folha larga", meaning something like "Purple Araçã with large leaves “and describing it as a south Brazilian “Araçã” variety originated from frosty areas...
Sprouting was OK and plants grew very fast, much faster than normal Psidium cattleyanum to which the leaves seemed very similar in appearance at the beginning, only larger... so for years I kept thinking this was just another purple Psidium cattleyanum who is not so rare, so I didn't gave it much attention...
All my plants were in pots at the GH and growing faster than P.cattleyanum but a little bit restrained by the not so big pots where they were growing... but one plant that I gave to a friend and that he planted in the ground (on 2009 or 2010) grew very much almost immediately and fruited on the same season... and then he told me the fruits were good and a little different from the normal araçã... I then decided to look a little closer to this tree and I became clear that it was not the Psidium cattleyanum… so my collector interest grew and I decided to re-pot and pay some more attention to my own plants... and then started trying to correct identify what species was this...
After several attempts I realized that on the EJardim blog when Eduardo posted about the strawberry-guava he made a reference that on south Brazil, on upper grounds (serras), the common Psidium cattleyanum was replaced by a much bigger species with the name Psidium longipetiolatum…That's it!...
Eduardo Jardim say this one can reach 25 to 30 meters high !... it doesn't surprised me so much as 3 meters on a 20 litter pot in only 2 years was my personal experience!... latter Helton posted also one photo of red fruits with this scientific name saying it started fruiting at 2011 at his place also, and speaking about 8 meters high ( less than EJardim but also a big tree for sure)... one common accepted name in Brazil seems to be "Araçã-Goiaba".
Well my plants started fruiting last year and the fruit were about the size of red Strawberry-guavas (+/- 3 cm diameter), but rounder and with a long pedicel, with seeds that were apparently bigger but also undetectable, at least in my mouth, and with a very good flavor that I rate very similar or even superior to the Psidium cattleyanum fruits.
Unfortunately I don't have pictures from the last year’s fruits but if you Google "Psidium longipetiolatum" you will find some photos of the fruits... look for those from Anestor who are very good as always...
 
For the moment I can only show you some photos of the other special details of this species and some comparisons with the common Psidium cattleyanum so you can understand what I am saying here:
Enjoy!

For start pics of some older leaves who have a typical heart shape:
 


Just compare these leaves with a normal Psidium cattleyanum leaf (on my hand):



Even tip branches leaves are bigger than those of the strawberry-guava ( P.cattleianum leaves on the background):



and the flowers buds are big, with a long stalk, and grow up vertically:


just compare the size of the flowers with those of Psidium cattleyanum (on the right):



This plant of the pics is still on my GH and is flowering for the first time now; on the GH they stay evergreen during all winter, but the plants that fruited last year on my GH were planted outside by December 2012 and they spent all winter outside where they probably faced -5ºC ; Those plants outside exhibited a total deciduous behavior and quickly became stripped of all leaves; Not really sure if this is normal behavior or just a reaction to the choke of being transferred from the GH to the outside without any adaptation period... next winter will tell;
Anyway those outside plants are now sprouting nicely and the only apparent difference to those on the GH is a delay of some weeks (or months?) on flowering... and I'm also waiting to see if they fruit OK outside. By the way the fruit set on the GH was close to 100% of the flowers... and ripe fruit fall to the ground without any visible damage...

This is the actual situation of one of the outside plants sprouting now:


I will try to post pics of the fruits latter (when in season) if I can just to complement this description;
I do think this "Araçâ" can really "push limits" to those living in a area too cold for the strawberry-guava... maybe by a full climate zone or two... you just have to have the space to accommodate such a big tree!

Miguel

Never seen this one discussed here on the forum but maybe I'm just distracted...

Happy to report that this one is a total winner for me just because I've left 2 females in pots outside this winter and they are re-sprouting nicely now in spring... so this seem to be the papaya to have if you live on a 9a zone... still need to check if it fruit outside as it does inside the GH but now I have to grow a male again because the only male that I had died because of rotten root this winter... did not really understood why because the several females were all ok... fortunately I had planted seeds from last years fruit and now I just have to wait to identify another reproducing male.

Fruits are interesting enough to grow and this at least a good "conversation piece"... Helton and Lorenzi say that the branches are also edible and used in Brazil to prepare some kind of local sweet desert and that is threatening this species in the wild... I have not tried the branches yet but will do it someday for sure... I think Helton also said on his book that someone is Brazil is testing the branches to floculate milk and prepare some kind of cheese... seems very versatile this one!

Sorry for the bad quality pics but i don't have others now...

 Hello all!... my name is Miguel and I live in Portugal, near the city of Aveiro (latitude 40º40' north) on Portuguese northwest coast. I do follow this forum for some time now but never had the courage to jump in... until now!
I live some 20 km inland from the Atlantic coast and normal climate here is 9b but my garden is at river valley floor and that gives me a 9a climate because it accumulates a lot of cold by drainage effect;
There I have a 200 sq. meters, 4.5 meters tall, unheated greenhouse dedicated solely to "rare stuff" and that gives me probably a 9b inside the greenhouse with the added benefit of the extra heat.
I've been collecting rare stuff since 2005/2006 when I bought my place and became interested on this... My first and most important supplier was my very good Brazilian friend Helton Josué that I believe most of you know well... I have the pleasure and honor to have his book "Coleccionando frutas-Vol 1" autographed with a special dedicatory where he treats me as a "colaborador"!... that’s one of my little treasures of this hobby!... but since then I have exchanged a lot of different stuff with a lot of nice people... most of them are now good friends.
 
My experience so far has demonstrated that the myrtaceae family is the one that thrives and rewards me the most on my conditions and that's my main focus for the moment... Here I have acid soil and acid water and that’s an added bonus for this particular family myrtaceae... In fact my place is near the city who claims to be the Portuguese Blueberry capital...
I have also some plants at my father’s house that is some 60 km south from here where the climate is 9b but water and soil are slightly alkaline.
Just to give you an idea of the different conditions I am dealing with I can tell you that at my place near Aveiro I have killed by freezing outside the GH several cherimoyas, macadamias, white sapotes and even one half meter tall Jaboticaba ... inside the greenhouse all these things thrive well and I even can get to have litchis, logans and even mangos (mangos do suffer a lot on wintertime)... at my father's place it's possible to have cherimoyas and white sapotes outside without problems... I hope this gives you all a clear idea of my conditions... anyway this forum seems the right place to report successes and failures and exchange ideas and questions because as far as I’ve seen this is the only place where there are talks about rare and obscure stuff that I’m actually growing by myself by the "test and failure" method because there aren't many detailed information out there...
I intend to gradually test and report which ones of these rare and obscure stuff can handle the 9a climate outside and this forum seems a nice place to report and discuss results... hope this would be my little contribution to mankind, or at least to the mankind fraction that likes different fruits and flavors and have a climate with colder temperatures than minus 3 º Celsius!... to me in fact this -3º Celsius seem a very important border to deal with specially when we are talking about rare myrtaceae stuff...
 
I'm trying to attach some photos just to document what I am saying here (hope they came out ok...first time here...still learning)

Some rare stuff from my little collection and some status info:

Diferent guabirobas (Campomanesias spp.):
Campomanesia schechtendaliana var. rugosa (fruiting already)
Campomanesia adamantium (flowering now) and Campomanesia cambessedeana ( Lozenzi puts them together on the “Blue Book” but Helton used to have them separated)
Campomanesia xanthocarpa (guabiroba)
Campomanesia xanthocarpa var.littoralis (guabiroba da praia/restinga)... fruiting
Campomanesia sessiliflora (flower a lot but no fruits yet)
Campomanesia guazumifolia (sete-capotes)... fruiting
Campomanesia phaea (cambuci)… growing
 
Other rare eugenias, psidiums and Myrciaria/Plinia that I am growing here:
 
Eugenia anomala ( Helton use to call it Hexaclamys tomentosa)... fruited last year for the 1ºtime
Eugenia myrchiantes ( or Hexaclamys edulis)...fruiting now
Psidium guineense ( have 2 diferent ones)...both fruiting since 2012
Psidium longiopetalum (araçã-goiaba)...fruiting since 2012.
Psidium australe var. suffruticosum… fruiting
Eugenia calycina ( Cerrado cherry - fruiting since 2012... I've cracked the Cerrado Curse on this one)
Eugenia pitanga ( Cerrado pitanga...several diferent ones... fruiting since 2011... no Cerrado Curse)
Eugenia klotchiana ( Cerrado pear...2 diferent ones... one flowering for the first time now...hoping to be the first to fruit this one at mainland Europe)
Eugenia negrensis... fruiting
Eugenia florida... fruiting
Eugenia speciosa (laranjinha do mato)... flowering now.
Eugenia selloi... fruiting
Eugenia blasthanta
Eugenia candolleana
Eugenia neonitida (Pitangatuba)
Eugenia pyriformis / Eugenia uvalha…uvaias (round, pear, several diferent ones fruiting)
Myrciaria delicatula (Cambui amarelo/ yellow)
Plinia edulis (cambucá)
Plinia rivularis
Jaboticabas ( M. jaboticaba ; M. cauliflora ; M. trunciflora ... waiting for the hybrid Jaboticaba to arrive...)
 
Things that I've fruited already but eliminated because of terrible bad taste:
Psidium myrtoides
Psidium eugenifolia
 
Of course I also have grumixamas, cherries of rio grande, pitombas, pitangas, guavas, strawberry guavas, feijoas but theses don’t seem to be so rare anymore… 

Looking forward to exchange some ideas and thoughts with all you fruit nuts.

Miguel