The Tropical Fruit Forum

Is anyone out there growing tropical apple relatives such as Assam Apple (Docynia indica) or Taiwan Crabapple (Malus doumeri var formosana)?

My curiosity was pricked by a video from Jan Dolin showing a Granny Smith apple fruiting (somewhat sparsely) in her central Florida yard. If the tree had been larger, the yield would not have been that bad. It made me think that the dwarfing rootstocks used for most apples are not good for Florida.

That reminded me of some reading I had done in the past. Apparently, Assam Apple is quite graft compatible with Quince and pear and is an evergreen native to tropical and sub tropical India. Taiwan Crabapple is native to subtropical southern China and tropical Vietnam (where it is reported to grow with coffee and citrus). John Fairey gardens apparently has a specimine in Texas that is quite at home.

Thanks to a generous friend, I got to try a white Illama this week for the first time. If you think sugar apple or atemoya is too sweet, this would be a good fruit to try. It has an excellent ballence of sweet and sour. The flavor profile is way different from atemoya--more like a soursop with a little pond apple thrown in the mix. Of course, trying to describe flavors is tricky, but it is more similar to soursop than anything else I have tried. While a lot of people on here have probably tried (or could try) frozen or canned soursop pulp, not many outside of Florida have tried pond apple. If that is you, think "close to soursop but not quite the same" you'll be on point. Its kindof like trying to imagine what an orange tastes like when you have only eaten tangerines--similar but not the same. As expected the peel was very thick for an annona (about as thick as a lemon peel) which made it easy to scoop the pulp out with a spoon. The seeds are large (about 3x the size of a sugarapple seed) and the pulp sticks to them a little more than other annonas I have tried. There was no grit unless you tried to scrape next to the thick peel. I assume this tree was a seedling, so if you have tasted one with a different flavor profile, let me know what you think.

Sometimes we can get so interested in exotic rare fruits that we forget about the rare fruits that we have right here at home. So, I'm going to start this by talking about the wild Flatwoods Plums (Prunus umbellata) that are ripening now in Highlands County. These are one of three native plum species I have found here. The others are Chickisaw and Scrub Plum (which have all ripened by now and are gone). The tree typically grows with a single trunk and the fruits are not very bothered by Curculio or brown rot. The trees are also very long lived if they don't get shaded out. I believe one of the trees in this wild grove to be close to 100 years old!



If you grow Scarlet Beauty plum, you may notice how similar they look. I am pretty sure that this is the Plum species that Ronald Lambert of Wauchula used in breeding Scarlet Beauty. I have seen these Flatwoods Plums put out full bloom with <40 hrs of chill (I have a hunch that they will go even lower than that). Scientists think that the really southern Flatwoods Plums got some of their adaptability from natural hybridization with Scrub Plum. The fruits are very similar to Cranberries in taste. So, they aren't good fresh, but they make a great substitute for cranberry or roselle jelly. I may even try to make some sauce for thanksgiving or fruit leather if I get enough. Finally, they make a great long lived rootstock for plums such as Scarlet Beauty (the peach type rootstock recommended for Florida has not been long lived in my experience).

I decided to let a bunch of volunteer tomatoes grow this year and ended up with a ton of Everglades plants. However, since I was lazy I just let them sprawl instead of staking them. To my great surprise, I discovered some plants that appear to be hybrids with the other tomatoes that I grew last year.



Typical Everglades on the left with hybrid on the right. Plant growth is the same as Everglades, but fruit size is much larger and the skin resists cracking. Now if only I can stabilize these genetics...

I am thinking about getting a sapodilla. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good one that is self fertile? The one my dad had years ago was not. I hear a lot about Butterscotch. Does anyone know if it is self fertile?

Does anyone have any leads for the Adara (aka Puente) plum that is used as a cherry rootstock/interstem? I finally have some plum rootstocks that survive long term here in Florida and would like to convert them to Christobalina cherry for my Dad. This is something he has wanted for years and I would like to make it a reality for him. Typical cherry rootstock is very poorly adapted here.

I recently had the opportunity to taste this lychee for the first time and thought that it might be interesting to do a taste review. B3 is reported to be one of the most consistent cropping lychees in warm climates and is a commercial cultivar in Australia. It ripened during the late-midseason window (approximately the same time as Brewster). I was able to try the fruit at two stages. The first fruits that I got (about 2 weeks ago) were perfectly ripe to my palate. At that stage, the fruits had an orangish pink color to the peel (which is a little thicker than the average lychee). At the orange stage, the fruits had an amazing Lychee/Pineapple flavor that I have not tasted in other Lychee. The flesh was about the same texture as Mauritius (medium crisp) and most of the seeds were fully formed. The ones that I got this week were fully colored reddish pink. They were slightly over ripe to my palate, but would possibly be more acceptable to people who do not appreciate a sub-acid flavor. At the reddish pink stage the pineapple flavor was mostly gone and the flavor was much closer to a fully ripe Mauritius lychee that has lost its acidity. I'll try to add a picture below. American $1 coins are about 1" for reference.

So, I grew two kinds of Physalis this year: New Hannover Ground Cherry (Physalis pruinosa) from Baker Creek and Ayacucho Giant Cape Gooseberry (Physalis peruviana) from Trade Winds. The ground cherry I planted in November and the Cape Gooseberry I planted in January. I can see why they are different species because the plants are totally different. The ground cherry grows low to the ground (~12") and likes cool but not freezing temps. The Cape Gooseberry has leaves that are almost 10 times the size of the ground cherry and makes a bush 4-5' tall! Both were less trouble to grow than most tomatoes (Everglades being the exception) with the Cape Gooseberry being the easier of the two in Florida conditions. Berries on the New Hannover run from 1/4" - 5/8" with the average being slightly less than 1/2". Berries on the Cape Gooseberry run from 5/8" to over an 1". I have not picked as many yet, but the average seems to be between 3/4" and 7/8." This may not sound like much but it makes a huge difference in how long it takes to fill a bucket. For flavor I like the Cape Gooseberry better. They have a fruity, perfumy, sweet and sour taste that is hard to describe. The New Hanover (a taste test winner apparently) had more of a 1 dimensional flavor to me. It was good, but you had to eat half a dozen to get the full flavor because of the small size. Plus, it had the bad habbit of dropping fruit before it was fully ripe and unlike a tomato they will not ripen off the bush unless they have already started the color break on the plant--very frustrating. Based on this one season I think the Cape Gooseberry (called Poha) in Hawaii is a better choice for most Florida gardens--bigger fruit, stonger flavor, and tougher plant. The ground cherry excells in two areas, though. It is much easier to cover in the frost (just throw a blanket over the top) and it is not smashed by high winds (staking or caging may have helped with that on the Cape Gooseberry). I think I will continue to grow both--at least for a couple seasons.

Please let me know your thoughts on this or experiences with other Physalis.

I was reading Baker Creek's seed catalogue and it says that the ripe aril on their Jyunpaku bitter melon from Okinowa is sweet and tastes like cherry candy. Can anyone verify if this is true and if there is enough flesh to bother with? If it is, I may have to grow some just to try it. Note: for anyone who does not know, the aril is edible but the seeds are poisonous.

A recent thread got me thinking that we need a place to exchange constructive advice about how to best ship/recieve the rare planting material or products that we value as a part of this group. Hopefully, those of you who have lots of experience with this will comment so that others can learn from your experience.

Texas Mark posted a while back about how his Sugar Dragon survived some pretty extreme cold when his green house lost power. That got me thinking that there might be some clones with more cold tollerence than most people realize. I was hoping everyone could chime in on what varieties they are growing and what temperature they have survived without getting damaged. My Delight got toasted pretty good in the mid 20s here. I am especially interested in information on any of the forms of Paul Thimpson's S8 (Sugar Dragon/Voodoo Child) and Houghton (its parent) if you have them. Thanks for your help!

So, I was out in the yard today and noticed that an okrung mango seedling has some bloom just starting. I pruned it back hard around the beginning of April because of cold damage (I didn't have time to freeze protect the tree because of everything else I had going on). I have always thought that somewhere around the middle of April was the latest opportunity for mango bloom here, but I guess I was wrong. 

Looking for budwood of any low chill plums that might do well in central Florida (250 chill hours or less). I am especially interested in the Gulf series plums (Gulf Gold, Gulf Ruby, Gulf Blaze, and Gulf Beauty) since I have grown them in the past successfully but would be interested in others as well. Already have Scarlet Beauty, a chickisaw plum with decent sized fruit that had been a rootstock (Sharpe?), and am trying Guthrie.