The Tropical Fruit Forum

Yes this fruit was misidentified in the book about Puerto Rico fruits as Rheedia brasilensis. Rheedia brasilensis, or now Garcinia brasilensis, looks nothing like the achachairu from Santa Cruz, it looks very similar to Rheedia edulis, now called Garcinia intermedia or lemon drop mangosteen. These authors know this is a mistake.
Lorenzi made a mistake in his book also by calling it G. laterifolia. I notified Lorenzi and he is aware of this mistake in his book. Lorenzi actually just followed the mistake made by previous author Vasquez in a book about Bolivian fruits. I've done a lot of research on this fruit and how it has been mistakenly identified by a whole bunch of authors. There were very many long threads about this in the Yahoo rarefruit group. Don't want to go into all the details, but basically, it seems that somewhere along the line this fruit was mistakenly thought to be Rheedia lateriflora. Some authors then made a typo and started calling it Rheedia laterifolia. Yes botanists and taxonomists make typos believe it or not! Has happened many times with this fruit. Anyway, it is not Rheedia lateriflora, which is a fruit from Jamaica that looks totally different, and now renamed Garcinia humilis. The name Rheedia laterifolia or Garcinia laterifolia does not exist as it was never suggested, entered, on any existing taxonomical record. Plantlist.org is a very good website. What it does is enter all the official names from Kew gardens and Missouri botanical gardens. Each one of these places has only some plant families covered, so by combining the two lists plantlist.org has most plant families covered. You can also trace back to original websites and taxonomical records.
Yes Adam the fruit photo on this forum is of Achachairu from Santa Cruz. Locally i am calling this Bolivian mangosteen, just easier for gringos to remember. 
Oscar

Hi Adam, yes jaboticabas can be grafted. The easiest is to do an approach graft. In Brazil they told me they do cleft graft and also works well. A friend in Israel also told me he started jaboticaba succesfully from cuttings.
Oscar

Felipe, Gouveia is a very popular large sized and extra good tasting mango from Hawaii. I remeber reading that Madame Francis is very turpentinie and not good tasting. Is this not true JF? I guess that is the one you are referring to when you say the Haitian mango is very good tasting?
Oscar

Hello fellow fruit lovers, some of you may already know me from my website: fruitlovers.com, or from the yahoo rarefruit group. I started growing tropical fruit when i moved to Hawaii in 1989. Prior to that i was living in San Diego, working as an organic landscaper, and being a truck farmer on the weekends. I mostly grew organic watermelons, melons, and assorted veggies for sale at health food stores. I moved to Hawaii to homestead. I was amazed by the number of tropical fruit trees possible to plant here, but had a very hard time sourcing them locally. So i began to collect from many various places and a small nursery business sprang out of extra plants i could sell. So my main focus is all edible plants, but since i live in Hawaii i am focusing for now on what grows best here: tropical fruits. Being a lazy gardener i do like the fact that fruit trees don't need to be replanted every year! I'm also interested in photography and some of you might have seen my fruit photos in the CRFG Fruit Gardener magazine. I like all tropical fruits but am focusing mostly on mango, mangosteen, durian, pulasan, and rambutan. Grow many others as well as I'm also very interested in introducing new fruits into Hawaii, mostly from Brazil and Asia.
I like this new forum's format as i found it very difficult to post photos, view photos, or be creative in the yahoo newsgroups. So thanks to murahilin and and JP for this brain child of theirs.
Oscar
PS you can see me below getting goofy with some marangs (Artocarpus odoratisimus), a very tasty fruit!
I got happy and then goofy as this was my first big harvest of marangs.