The Tropical Fruit Forum

I have seen farms in windy areas with whole rows of big jackfruit as windbreaks and they do well. Inga edulis is also used occasionally here and they get big. Having soft brittle wood they are prone to snapping off limbs in strong winds.

Thanks for the info, Mike.  Artocarpus seemed like they would be tough enough to serve well for windbreak & nice to have your confirmation on it.  I kind of expected that the inga would loose a branch from time to time (as a general rule of thumb, it seems like trees that grow real fast aren't real tough).  However having them just flop out of the ground has been upsetting.

My experience is very different from yours John. I have ingas as windbreak and never had an inga tree fall over, and in 30 years never had a single branch break. I'm wondering if you have some kind of root damage from weevils or other insects, or boring insects in the branches causing your problems?

Thanks for the input, Oscar.  It certainly doesn't make me feel any better.  I know that the branches are clear of boring insects since there is no sign of anything at the break point or when I chop them up.  I suppose that there could be something going on in the roots as I have not tried to pull the stumps.  The trees look healthy & vigorous, bearing multiple crops per year, no hints until the tree is suddenly down.  Maybe I have pissed off some menehune....

What do you think about Jakfruit as a windbreak?
Pandanus?
Just wondering.
Peter

Pandanus (hala) seem like they would be a bit slow and a bit too "airy" to be very good but maybe not with multiple rows of windbreak.  I really like hala and planted a variegated one in my front yard that was supposed to be P. tectorius but ended up being some other species that just formed a huge dome.  It ended up maybe 10' tall and about 16' diameter before I took the chainsaw to it.  Man, what a job to chop that beast out -- heavy trunks laying along the ground, intertwining and rooting as they went.

I have a friend who is very hot on artocarpus for windbreak.  I don't think he has any practical experience with it yet (at least not long enough to say yes or no).  I am planning on putting jackfruit and pedalai in to replace the inga (gradual transition).  I suspect it should work out ok.

After just cutting up another Inga tree that came down the other day without any strong winds, I thought it might be useful to post about them.  I have seen references to their use as windbreaks a number of time so utilized them in mine.  I have planted feuillei, striata, edulis, and spectabilis.  I have found feuillei to be pretty much useless.  This last one is the 3rd or 4th that have fallen over or split and come down.  I also had one that started to fall over but I pulled it upright with my tractor, cut branches off one side to reduce weight on that side, and staked it back up with t-posts.  I have also had a few instances of large branches breaking on these.  Surprisingly, I don't recall them breaking when we were experiencing any especially strong winds.

The root system seems to run very shallow along the top of the soil.  I do not know if this is typical or a function of our clay soil and abundant rainfall.  I suspect that this is a big factor in them just falling over.

I have had one or two cases of striata breaking limbs but no tree failures so far (knock on wood).  I have not had problems with the edulis or spectabilis to date.  These trees have a more vase-like structure rather than spreading like feuillei (although I must admit I pruned the feuillei and striata to encourage a denser, spreading canopy).  The spectabilis and edulis were also put in later and are a bit smaller than the other two species.

I just wanted to raise a red flag for anyone who may be considering these for windbreak duty.  I liked the idea of getting fruit from the windbreak and getting the bonus of nitrogen fixation.  I am kicking myself now for having used them as I am spending time I could spend on the orchard with cleaning up these things and just praying that they don't take out my hogwire fence when they come down.

Hey Mike, how big (high) do these have to get to start to fruit?  I've got a couple (thanks to you!) planted out and the larger is maybe 10'.  I found one of these seedlings to be totally unaffected by our eugenia blight here but the other was set back severely by it for a bit but has recovered  somewhat (it doesn't affect all Myrtaceae but the local rose apples here all have severe cases and cedar bay cherries seem to be hard hit as well).

Thanks for posting this.  I usually find checklists to be annoying as they often just list species found somewhere without any information about the species.  However, this one looks like they have the intent of eventually entering content about the various species.  It could be pretty useful if they do that.

It's not too uncommon to do this type of grafting with temperate fruit trees & ornamentals (with other members of the same broad family).  As beicadad mentioned, apple to hawthorn is one which is reported to work (which obviously didn't for him).  Another is mountain ash to pear.  I had one of these grafts survive many years with fine growth, flowering, and fruiting.  After maybe 8 years or so, the tree just snapped off at the graft union, where it had obviously never really made a sound union from an "engineering" standpoint but seemed to horticulturally up to that point.  So I'd wait a good many years before assuming it is really a success.

Hi John,  the fruit is not really free stone which seems kind of typical with pulusan compared to freestone rambutan.  The flavor is good.
Peter

No, freestone pulasan seems to be more uncommon.  We had a tasting of some superior dark red/maroon/black pulasan here at the USDA in Hilo a few years back.  I believe there were maybe 4 different selections, all were big with great flavor and most were freestone or nearly so.  The director at the time was considering releasing some of these to cultivation but he is gone and evidently so is the planned release(?).

Sounds like your yellow is a winner regardless.

Thanks, Mike, it looks like a great doc.  It is going to take a while to wade through it & absorb all the info.

John

What?  No Moreton Bay bugs on the barbie???  I know, you love prawns but what's love got to do with it?  Nice to see you back posting prolifically, Mike.  It will be good to be seeing your sage advice again.

Sorry for hijacking the thread, Jake.

John

Hello my dear, let me know how many seeds of each species you intend to buy, and the full address so I can calculate the shipping cost for sending the seeds.
We have the following species:
Annona spinesces $ 3.00 each
Annona vepretorum $ 3.00 each
Annona coriacea $ 3.00 each
Annona dioica $ 3.00 each
Annona salzmanii $ 2.00 each
Annona crassiflora $ 1.50 each
Maltese Annona $ 1.50 each.

Thank you

It looks like many of these are Cerrado species.  Would any grow in areas with wetter, more uniform rainfall?  What is Maltese Annona?  I can't seem to find any information on it.

You probably want to make sure to plant a few trees.  Pili nut is dioecious (male & female on separate plants).  (I hate to bring this up, since someone always seems to know of a tree somewhere that is self-fruiting.  However, I would hate to plant one tree and find it never fruits so I wanted to bring this to your attention.)

John Mood had been a big proponent of pili nut and probably was responsible for a lot of interest in it here.  However, a few years back, HTFG has a guest speaker in from Africa (Paul Noren) and we got a private tour of the Hilo USDA facility.  We tried C. harveyi and we both felt it was at least as good, probably better, than pili and was very heavy bearing.  If you request pili nut seed from them, maybe you should also request the harveyi as well (and, yes, harveyi is also dioecious).

John