The Tropical Fruit Forum

Has anyone tried rooting cuttings or marcotting? Wonder how vigorous it would be on its own roots.

I grafted four scions of Prague on different rootstocks in my greenhouse in Feb 2023 and all four failed to bud out all year despite staying green. I cut one off thinking it had failed, but the other three are still just sitting there now, green but refusing to bud out. I've never seen anything like it, but I assume it's related to the lack of vigor, or incompatibility with rootstocks (3 were different kinds of mandarins, one was a lemon seedling).

I noticed today that one of the three is showing very slight bud development, so I'm holding out hope. That's the one that's grafted to the central leader of a grafted Pixie mandarin (in the ground in my greenhouse).

My yuzu seedling that survived the January freeze with just defoliation (all but one leaf!) is just now starting bud swell.

I don't think there's any (reliable) way to know which are zygotic vs the clones. You just have to grow them all and wait for fruit, and then you can topwork any of them that aren't good enough for your needs using scions from the good ones. I don't think anyone should sell polyembryonic seedlings as the named variety, no matter how certain they claim to be that they are a clone. Maybe a DNA test would help, but maybe not if it's just looking at gene markers because a self-pollinated seedling will have many of the same genes.

Also drymifolia, if that Prague grafting situation works out, I'd indeed be interested.

All of my Prague grafts last year did this weird thing where they didn't fail but also never budded out. Here more than a year later they are STILL green but haven't grown yet. I'm hoping one of them starts growing this year, out of the three that are still green.

Ficus saussureana? It is called loquat leaf fig.

That looks pretty close! The only issue is the photos I've found of the trunk all show aerial roots, and this tree doesn't seem to have those at all.

In any case, I agree it's got to be some kind of Ficus species.

Yeah, not worth getting into an accident and hurting yourself. Looks like some sort of a pouteria species.  Loquat has fruit on clustered stems.

I don't think these fruit look anything like pouteria, I might be tempted to climb up if that's what I thought they were, but I'm guessing it's an inedible Ficus species and won't bother with it more.

And I found a whole one, very dried-out looking, they are hollow and fig-like inside, doesn't look like there's much to eat even if they are edible.

I wonder if anyone knows what this tree is, and whether the fruit is any good. The tree is very large and overhangs my in-laws' yard in Miami.

I have never seen the fruit drop but there are almost always some fruit on the tree year-round, and I wonder if it might be worth climbing up on their roof to pick some.

The leaves look vaguely like loquat or mamey, but the fruit look more like some kind of fig, and seem to be held singly or in small clumps close to the stem just behind the current terminal growth on each stem, not at all the way loquat hold their fruit in clusters on panicles.

This tree seems to have some kind of nutrient deficiency (leaves are chlorotic), so that might also be impacting the fruit size or color. The bark is smooth.

I would ask the neighbor, but no one ever seems to be there, and I know the previous owner who had lived there for many decades died last year, so I doubt the new buyers would know anything about this tree.

If I had to guess probably 3-4 years old. In desperate need of a repotting too

Here's one of mine that's the same age, this is after three winters outside in the ground... photo is from a couple months ago, but it hasn't started budding out yet so it still looks kind of like this now, maybe a little more leaf burn but not much:



They are definitely a lot less vigorous outdoors here in Seattle!

I would love to hear from any experienced container growers for avocados, but there aren't very many because avocados have very wide & deep roots and aren't generally amenable to container growing long-term. Greg Alder did write a post on this topic more generally:

https://gregalder.com/yardposts/growing-avocado-trees-in-containers/

I think some of the trees shown there have likely rooted through their drain holes into the soil below, but these 200 gal harvest bins (from that post) look like a good permanent container size:

that is true for large mature trees.  For the small trees like these, I just lop them off and bark graft them in December.

Ok, sounds good. I'll reach out around then to see if you still feel up to sending some scions of this one. And I'll pay shipping of course.

Great stuff and it is good to see such experimentation with avos. If Florida and Hawaii are the ferrari's of avocadoes Australia is a rickety skateboard with only a handful of cold loving Guatemalans on offer.

Nevertheless, the Western Australia ag ministry has published some really great information on growing avocados in "cool" climates. While they do focus on Hass, many of the findings are more generally applicable, and they are the only source I've found that compared bloom times for many of the cultivars they tested as Hass pollenizers. Here's an example:

https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/spring/challenges-growing-hass-avocado-cool-regions?nopaging=1

And this:
https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/spring/growing-avocados-flowering-pollination-and-fruit-set?nopaging=1

And here's the one comparing bloom timing of various cultivars:
https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/spring/cross-pollinisers-hass-avocado?nopaging=1

I've mentioned this in other threads but decided to finally actually start one specifically about the project I'm organizing to breed avocados for our bioregion. I've also posted about it on some other forums, so it's possible some of you have seen those threads already.

The gist of the project is I've been collecting scionwood and seeds of allegedly cold-hardy avocados for a few years now, and each spring I distribute trees to project members in this area. In return, members agree to post updates on the project website for their trees, and to let me collect cuttings from any that seem hardy enough to at least survive even our worst freezes. So far nothing tested seems to fit the bill, but I also haven't tested all the collected varieties outdoors yet.

I've got a 320 sq ft greenhouse with five multi-graft trees planted in the ground inside, the oldest of those being about 3 years since first grafting, but many varieties were grafted more recently. I also have started hundreds of seeds over the last few years, planting over a hundred trees in my own yard, most of which are no longer with us. The seeds have mostly been donated by a grower in Gainesville, FL, but some were also purchased from various sources, including some members on here.

I did not get any fruit to set last year, but the trees are about twice as large now (9+ ft tall, 6+ ft wide), with at least 10x more flower buds in total, so I'm hoping for first fruit in the project this coming fall or winter. I've been out hand pollinating 2-3x daily for the last week or so, but things are just getting started in there. From today, this is Walter Hole:



At the moment the project has nearly 100 members who have confirmed their email address and given a ZIP code, 34 of whom have already picked up a combined 93 trees in the first two distributions.

Next year I'll have over 150 trees to distribute, but that still may not be as many as the members are willing to plant. A few members have significant acreage and seem willing to plant many dozens of trees apiece.

I'm happy to answer any questions. The project is currently limited to "anyone in USDA growing zone 8b or higher in the lowlands around the Salish Sea or along the oceanside coast of the Olympic Peninsula," but there's some wiggle room. If you want to join, start that process here.

Here's the list of all the varieties that have contributed either seeds or scions to the project, and you can click on each one to see a profile that includes photos and lists of trees associated with the variety in the collection (seedlings of it, trees grafted with it, or own-root clones of it).

Sorry for the long post! To finish, here is a photo of almost half of the new babies, aka next year's distribution:

Would you happen to have a list of named varieties that survived? We 9a'ers are always looking for a survival avocado. Thanks!

Ones that have taken little or no damage in the milder freezes (24°F and above) include Poncho and Northrup, but I've protected those when it was below around 20°F, and most unprotected trees have been killed above ground by the worst freeze each winter.

The rootstock for Northrup was lost in the 14.7°F freeze this January, but I successfully harvested scionwood after the freeze that is now budding out on new rootstocks. But that tree is dead so I'll be starting over from scratch with it even though it seems to be one of the hardiest.

I've had a few grafted varieties that showed little or no damage above the graft when their roots were killed, so that's one reason I'm focusing on just distributing seedlings for the most part.  Most of the promising (allegedly) hardy grafted varieties are being grown in the greenhouse, and haven't been tested outdoors yet.

The project is still in its early days, but I expect that basically none of the existing cold hardy varieties will prove fully hardy in this climate. However, I'm hoping that some of the hardiest have different genes and mechanisms for hardiness, and that by crossing them hundreds of different ways and testing seedlings for many years, we'll manage to find some trees that can actually make it here.

Other areas that are 9a have some varieties that likely do fine, but Seattle is a really tough 9a (8b until the latest map), where we get mid-teens (°F) at least once every 4-5 years. The first three years of the project have had winter lows of 16.2°F, 17.0°F, and 14.7°F. Some years the lowest low is in the upper 20s, so we are only 9a because that's calculated using a 30-year average.