The Tropical Fruit Forum

Jealous of the forbesii lol. Tried to import them and they were all kaput presumably as the seeds are tiny for garcinias.

I bought some forbesii seeds from James Farwell a couple of years ago. Nothing. 0% germination rate. I've heard that this is not uncommon. I believe someone else on the forum said that forbesii has a germination rate of 1-2%, since it produces many non-viable seeds. Although I'm tempted to buy some, since it seems like an interesting fruit and Lance is a great seller, I know better.

My plant sale last month went well, so I am selling off a few more of my extra plants. Some of these are relatively common plants, others are a little harder to find. With the exception of some Osmocote fertilizer, these plants have been grown organically. Some of the plants do not look perfect but all are healthy. Some of these plants are root-bound and need to be up-potted, which you should probably do once they become acclimated to your growing area.

These plants have all been grown in a partly sunny location. They should be introduced to full sun conditions gradually to prevent any leaf burn or other damage.

These plants will be shipped using USPS Priority Mail with the shipping costs based on the size, weight, number of plants ordered, and buyer location. I will do what I can to save you money on shipping costs by making these plants as compact as possible for shipping without damaging them. They will not be shipped bare root; they will be shipped in their container with potting soil, as pictured (unless otherwise stated). I do not ship internationally. Buyers in California, Arizona, and Hawaii purchase plants at your own risk; I am not responsible if they are confiscated.

I securely pack all my plants. Ask TnTrobbie about his Plinia rivularis’s miraculous survival after being lost by the US Postal Service for three weeks.

Payment through PayPal.

Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have.

Scientific Name (Common Name) – Number of Seedlings Available – Seedling Size (Pot Height Not Included) – Seedling Age – Price Per Plant
Also included is where I purchased the seeds.


Carissa macrocarpa (Natal Plum) – 1 – 12” tall – 2 years – $10 SOLD
Purchased from Trade Winds Fruit. Plant is leggy from being grown in too much shade and will need to be staked up until that abates.


Diospyros inconstans (Marmelinho) – 1 – 3” tall – under 1 year – $35
Purchased from a fellow Tropical Fruit Forum member.


Eugenia repanda (Pitanga-Jambo) – 1 – 15” tall – 2 years – $55 SOLD
Purchased from Trade Winds Fruit.


Garcinia hombroniana (Seashore Mangosteen) – 1 – 4” tall – over 1 year – $20 SOLD
Purchased from Farwell Fruit Farm. Tip burn to a few leaves, either from an issue with city water or from getting slightly too much sun this spring.


Garcinia macrophylla (Pungara/Bacuripari) – 1 – 4” tall – under 1 year – $50 SOLD
Purchased from a fellow Tropical Fruit Forum member.


Hylocereus megalanthus (Yellow Dragon Fruit) – 3 – 8”-11” long – 2 years – $8
Seeds from a commercial variety of Yellow Dragon Fruit.


Manilkara triflora – 1 – 5” tall – over 1 year – $55 SOLD
Purchased from a Tropical Fruit Forum member.


Myrciaria floribunda (Rumberry/Guavaberry) Group Pot – 5 plants in 1 pot – 2"-6" tall – Sold as a Group – $60
Myrciaria floribunda seeds are notorious for having a poor germination rate, something that has been discussed on this Forum by myself and others. When I purchased these seeds from a fellow Forum member in late 2020, a few came up quickly that winter and a few more came up gradually in the spring and summer of 2021. Most of them, about a dozen seeds, did absolutely nothing, so I took them out of their seed starting tray and placed them in this group pot. I kept it watered but generally paid no attention to it. In the fall and winter of 2022, four seeds germinated, and at the end of April of this year, a fifth seed germinated. Over two years after first being planted! So, this pot contains those five plants plus all the other seeds I threw in there in 2021 (6 to 9 ungerminated seeds) which may or may not still be viable. It goes to show that you should never give up on Myrciaria floribunda seeds. I ended up with a decent germination rate after all; it just took over two years.


Plinia aureana (White Jaboticaba) – 1 – 10” tall – 2 years – $20 SOLD
Purchased from a Tropical Fruit Forum member.


Plinia coronata (Restinga Jaboticaba) – 1 – 14” tall – 2 years – $40 SOLD
Purchased from a Tropical Fruit Forum member.


Plinia hybrid (Scarlet/Escarlate Jaboticaba) – 1 – 6” tall – 1 year – $15 SOLD
Purchased from a Tropical Fruit Forum member.


Plinia rivularis (Guaporeti) – 1 (plant on the left in the photo) – 7” tall – 2 years – $20 SOLD
Purchased from a reputable eBay seller. Due to a lack of rain in my area, I had to water them with city water for a while. That caused tip burn to the leaves. The new growth does not have that issue since I have been able to resume watering them with rainwater.


Plinia sp. (Jaboticaba Lujαn) – 1 – 10” long (longest branch, low spreading growth as pictured) – 1 year – $40 SOLD
Purchased from a Tropical Fruit Forum member.


Psidium guajava (Patillo Guava) – 7 6 – 11”-29” tall – 2 years – $10
Purchased from Trade Winds Fruit. The taller ones will require an extra oversized shipping charge or pruning to get under that charge, buyer’s choice.


Psidium guineense (Brazilian Guava) – 1 – 45” tall – 2 years – $50
Purchased from Trade Winds Fruit. Pot not included. It was repotted a few months ago, so it can be downpotted to save weight. It can also be pruned smaller for a lower shipping charge at the buyer’s request.


Tapura amazonica – 1 – 5” tall – under 1 year – $40
Purchased from a Tropical Fruit Forum member.

I've never had any similar leaf damage on my Spanish limes. Occasionally, I get a little brown area on the tips in the summer, and in the winter, the leaves get a little vein-y looking from the air being a little dry. Otherwise, my Spanish limes tend to be a healthy, bright green. They do grow quite slowly. Although my plants look healthy, they don't grow like healthy plants. I have never had much luck with plants in the Soapberry family, though at least I have been able to keep my Spanish limes alive without any dieback.

Very hard to tell without seeing the entire fruit. It could be an Endiandra, such as E. impressicosta (Steelbutt). It could be a Cerbera, like C. floribunda (Cassowary Plum). There are a few similar, dark-colored fruits found in that area of Australia.

My contribution to the PGA thread—a couple of photos of my Psidium striatulums' first crop of fruit. Confirmation that this species can fruit in a container, at a small size, and in a temperate location (brought inside for the winter, of course).

The old trick that people used to use was to put Surinam cherries in the refrigerator for a couple of hours after picking. It would eliminate or greatly reduce any unpleasant resinous taste.

Surinam cherries are variable in taste from plant to plant. There are new varieties such as Zill Dark which have been bred to be quite sweet with no resin, basically like a cherry. But, that cherry taste is not universal. One of my Surinam cherries fruited this Spring; it is a four-year-old seedling descended from a much older, non-Zill-developed plant. The fruit ripened to a bright orange color, and the taste was unique, to say the least, as if someone had mixed together an orange with a bell pepper. With such an interesting flavor combination, I'm not sure I would want to eat them everyday, but at the same time, I'll be glad to eat a few when they're available.

Like NateTheGreat, I also ordered Kadsura coccinea seeds from Trade Winds. I had a better germination rate, but still well less than 50%. Trade Winds is sold out of coccinea and heteroclita seeds right now but has Kadsura longipedunculata.

Bump

The 7" floribunda seedling has sold. Price drop on the remaining seedlings.

Quote from: W. on June 02, 2023, 09:34:47 PM

Quote from: Jaboticaba45 on June 02, 2023, 03:27:08 PM

Quote from: W. on May 30, 2023, 06:57:59 PM

Quote from: Jaboticaba45 on May 30, 2023, 06:39:25 PM

I grafted a few onto sabara and they all took for now.

Based on what I've heard of Adam Shafran's experience, grafting Myrciarias onto Sabara rootstock is hit-or-miss depending on the species. But, if you have the rootstock and the scions, it never hurts to experiment. Without some growers experimenting and succeeding (or failing), we would all have a lot less knowledge of what can and cannot be grown. Here's to your experiment being a success.

W,
what myrciarias did Adam mention? I don't recall him mentioning them before.
I heard of someone trying glazioviana to edulis, but it didn't work out. I mean plinia and myrciaria is vastly different, but the rumberry looked just like a plinia leading me to try to graft it.

I seem to remember him talking about grafting difficulties with guaquiea and strigipes. He had tried grafting them on a few different things, and they did not take on everything. I think glazioviana might have been mentioned as having the same characteristic, as well. I'm not 100% positive about that, though. This information came from one of his live streams from a couple of years ago, and I could be recalling things incorrectly. I went through a period during that time where I was watching a lot of his live streams. At least 95% of those streams were completely useless, inane drivel about chickens and skateboarding and other nonsense. But, that 5% of the stream where he actually talked about growing Plinias and other plants was an absolute gold mine of information and made up for the rest of the nonsense. I wish I had taken some notes or made some clips from those live streams. They're still on YouTube, but there's probably a thousand of them; way too many to comb through to get that 5% of expert Plinia knowledge.

This info is buried in the forum somewhere. Adam sent me guaquiea and strigipes scions to graft onto Glazioviana, I believe because that had worked for him. My grafts failed.
I doubt Rumberry will not suffer from delayed incompatibility onto Sabara, but time will tell.
Seedlings don't pop up for sale here that often , though it is not that rare.
I had bad germination rates and no luck digging up suckers from the 100's of seedlings under a giant Rumberry planted in the 1930's!

While Adam was spewing a lot of nonsense, filming himself harassing his USPS delivery driver and showing off the Adam's apples of his dates ,
 I would like to say a lot of people really like raising chickens and going skateboarding. I don't think either of those hobbies are well described as nonsense .

To each his own as to whether something is or is not nonsense. Raising chickens is not, in and of itself, nonsense; it can be quite useful as long as those people raising chickens don't live me, and I don't have to hear them. My point was more about the large amount of non-fruit growing conversation on live streams either ostensibly or explicitly about rare fruit growing.

It's too bad Tropical Fruit Forum's search feature is not very good. It can make it somewhat difficult to find stuff.

If Southern California and Florida have shown us anything, it is that large numbers of people tend not to equal large numbers of citrus. It tends to equal tract housing, fast food restaurants, and many, many parking lots.

So yes, I do believe that a remote, sparsely populated island in the South Pacific could potentially have the world's largest citrus collection. Ua Huka could be like New Zealand. In New Zealand, sheep outnumber people. On Ua Huka, citrus varieties could outnumber people. Remember, all it takes is one person, a small group of people, or an organization and a large enough tract of land to create an outstanding fruit collection. Add in a naturally disease-free location and time for the collection to accrue plants and mature, and you can have a very spectacular collection.

In Ua Huka's case, you have Lιon Litchlι, Mayor of Ua Huka and Marquesan Minister for Agriculture, who founded the arboretum. Later, the French organization CIRAD and specifically citrus expert Alain Sizaret would take part in the development of Arboretum Papua Keikaha's citrus collection. The arboretum sits on 17 hectares (42 acres), and the citrus collection was allocated 2.5 hectares (a little over 6 acres) in 1995. The arboretum has had nearly thirty years to accumulate citrus varieties, with help from INRA. There is no greening in the Marquesas Islands to kill off the collection, either.

Now, does Arboretum Papua Keikaha definitively have the largest citrus variety collection in the world, larger than the INRA-CIRAD Citrus Germplasm Collection in San Giuliano, Corsica or the UC Riverside Citrus Variety Collection. Possibly, but likely not. Despite what Tahiti Tourisme states on their website, Arboretum Papua Keikaha does not claim to have the world's largest citrus collection in their 2010 guidebook and "only" claims to have several hundred varieties. INRA and UCR both claim to have around 1,100 varieties. In INRA's case, it claims "more than" 1,100 varieties, and in UCR's case, "nearly" 1,100 varieties.

However, what Arboretum Papua Keikaha may rightly be able to claim is the largest citrus collection in the world that is open to the public. Unless I am mistaken, INRA and UCR are not open to the public, since they are research institutions that do not want people potentially exposing their collections to plant pathogens. Plus, they don't have the staff to deal with many visitors; the staff they have are very busy doing research and trying to keep their collections disease-free.

Either way, whether this arboretum is the largest citrus collection in the world or "just" a very large citrus collection, if I ever find myself adrift at sea in French Polynesia, I now know what island to set sail towards.

The rumberry I got from W. last year sometime has done very well and put on significant growth. Really cool species. Want to try out the fruits but I imagine it'll still be awhile. Any idea on age to fruit?

Rumberry is Sabara-like in its time to fruiting: about eight years. I've seen references in literature to fruiting in six years, but the couple of growers I've read about who have personal experience growing it say that their plants took eight years, in Florida.

Patience is a virtue when growing Myrtaceae.

Do you really love the lamp, or are you just saying it because you saw it?