The Tropical Fruit Forum

Hi everybody.
Here are some seeds and plants I have for sale at the moment.

Seeds:

Araucaria angustifolia - €3 each


Araucaria bidwilii - €1 each (only 2 available)


Jackfruit (deep yellow flesh, and very crunchy. Super sweet and low latex. No named variety) - €1 each - above 20 seeds - €0.50 each


Yellow Eugenia brasiliensis (germinated seeds) - €3 each (Sold out)


Black Eugenia brasiliensis (germinated seeds) - €2,50 each (Sold out)


Inga Sp (probably Inga sessilis, but not sure) - €2,5 each (only a few available) SOLD OUT



Plants:

Murraya koenigii - €6 each


Pereskia aculeata - €8 each pot with 3 different varieties; rooted cuttings


Inga edulis - €12 each (airlayers of mature/producing tree)




Eugenia Sp. - €12 each ( a variety of Uvaia)


Seedlings of Palora dragonfruit - €5 each


Maclura conchichinensis - €15 each



Interested, please PM.

Cheers.

Have some Cherry of the Rio Grande seeds for sale or trade.
price is €1 per seed plus shipping. Minimum order is 10 seeds.







Also have some Solanum robustum seeds. 20 seeds for €3 plus shipping.

I spent the last few days in Paris, where I was promoting some running events I co-organize here in my Island. In some free time I had, I took a visit to the local "China Town" (Cartier Chinois), where I was able to find an asian supermarket with plenty of tropical fruits, including fresh Durian, for my surprise. The prices weren't cheap, but some of these are fruits I'm not able to put my hands on that often, so I take some, having tasted 3 for the first time: Durian, Star apple, and a type o Salacca that I think is S. wallichiana.
My first impression on the Durian, was that it doesn't smell that bad as some people says, at least for my nose. However the seeds are quite stinky. The taste at first is quite bizarre, but I liked, at least this variety. It was a mix, of curry, roasted pork, banana and maybe passion fruit; a friend that was with me, also tasted a bit, and had the same opinion about taste. The thing with it, is that the seeds are huge and the flesh isn't that much, but still worth the experience. Saved the seeds to plant, let's see how they're going to develop...
The best surprise for me was the Caimito! I never payed to much attention to this fruit, and for so many times I had the opportunity to buy cheap seeds of this species, and always tought it wouldn't please me; this time as it was just there, and it wasn't that expensive (comparing to others), I decided to get one, and I loved it. Can't descrive the taste, but it was very, very good. Regreted to have bought only one. By the way, it was the green type. Also saved the seeds to plant.
Another that decided to buy, was the Salacca. It was labeled (from the origin) as S. zalacca, but it definitely wasn't that species! I think it is S. wallichiana (it would be great if someone could confirm, or trow the correct ID), and bought it just to compare with S. zalacca, that I tried 2 years ago. I had read the this species was inferior, in almost everything, to S. zalacca, but wanted to have my own opinion, and ended up very happy to had pick that, as for me these are much better than than S. zalacca, only loosing for the size, that is almost half of the other. It is much more Juicier, sweet and has very good perfume; in the other hand is less crunchier. I got most fruits with a single lobe, but also some with 2 lobes and one with 3 lobes. Will plant them separated as I read somewhere that seeds from 3 lobed fruits are more prone to produce female plants.

Also got Sugar apple, and some longans, and these last ones, surprised me because they were a little bit bigger than the ones that I had before (some were almost the size of lychees), but also the seeds were much bigger than the ones that I'm used to eat; also the skin was quite thicker, much more than the 2 other varieties that I already had; and finnaly, another surprise was the size of leaves, as it had one leave with it, and comparing with the leaves from my plants, they are less than half the size.

Today I've found this plant in a nursery nearby, but it wasn't labeled, and when I asked to the employees, nobody was able to tell me what it was, not even the owner...
To me it looks like some kind of Eugenia (maybe a type of Uvaia???), but the owner said it was obtained from seeds he colected +- 2 years ago in another nursery in the north of Portugal, and that the fruit was dark, round, about 2cm and attached to the stems/branches, which gives the idea of some kind of Jaboticaba, but in my opinion the leaves are too thick, for being a Plinia/Myrciaria, and also too big... All jaboticaba related plants I've seen have quite thin leaves (except M. vexator), and also much smaller, than this ones, that are between 5cm and 8cm.
The new growth is redish.

Any ideas of what this could be?

One of the places where I have some of my trees planted started having like a mini swamp arrived from nowhere in the last 10 months or so, and is increasing in size. I had a Inga feuillei planted on that spot, and it died, almost for sure because of too much water. My question is; does anyone know of a species that produces a decent fruit and don't matter of having it's feet constantly wet?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions on this.

Cheers,
Nιlio.

My cousin is growing this crasy banana, that has set a triple bunch.
The mother plant, last year has divided in 2 and each one produced one bunch, but this one exceded the mother...



Ps. The photo was sent to me by my cousin, one of the owners of the plant.

As all we know, Myrtaceae species are hard to take by cuttings, and even by airlayer. However I think I'm starting to have some success, and I think I got the key factor to do it.
In all the cases I'm observing some evolution, there's one thing in comon: "Constant wet soil".
Also in all cases I used small/thin cuttings, usually sucker from the base of other plants I have, that I remove and stick in the soil (as I hate to trow them to waste).

Here you can see some images of the best cases, all of them were planted about 8 months ago except the jaboticaba, that is standing there for a little more than one year.

Pitangatuba (it only had 2 leaves when planted)


Cherry of the Rio Grande (the hardest one)


Black Pitanga (you can see some new growth)


Jaboticaba


and another one when I transplanted it 3 months ago


I've "tested" if they had roots or not, by trying to pull it off gently, and all of them are well stucked to the soil, specially the Jaboticaba.

These last days I've been noticing a few tropical trees in bloom or already fruiting in some public gardens, arround Funchal, so I decided to show what we are able to eat for free when walking in Funchal Downtown.

Syzygium malaccense





Syzygium jambos





Eugenia aggregata



Eugenia brasiliensis Ssp. leucocarpus



Acca sellowiana



Tamarindus indica



Macadamia integrifolia



Artocarpus heterophylus



Musa velutina





Butia capitata





Aleurites molucana



Phytolacca dioica



Carissa macrocarpa



Cocos nucνfera





Garcinia xanthochymus









This last one, I'm not pretty sure of it's ID, as it has a label on the trunk saying it is a Garcinia xanthochymus, but the fruit of this species, is suposed to be very acidic and have no/very low sweetness, but the fruits in the last two images (that were found among all the green ones by my 4 year old daughter), had a certain ammount of acidity in the exterior rind, but yet still pleasant to eat, and the inner flesh arround the seeds, had almost no acidity, and was, very frangrant, and with a strong papaya taste, and some reminiscences of mango... Can someone comment on personal experiences with this fruit? Has anyone experienced something close to that in taste? I wonder if it's not another Garcinia species...
The fruit in the last image was 132,5gr.

As my topics usualy are questions/ID help, this time I will show some of the trees that I have producing fruit or flowers at this moment!

Starting with my papayas, then my mangos, and finally one of my Surinam cherry.

Has anyone ever saw this? I had a little strawberry plant, growing directly, out of a strawberry fruit.
It is very bizarre, for me, as I've never seen nothing like this, and I'm quite familiarized with strawberries, as my family always had them...

Here are the photos of that:





Ps. I know the fruit is quite ugly, because a slug ate half of it...

Hi everyone.

There's awile that I'm trying to properly identify this species of Pouteria, but at each research I got more doubts... Does anyone knows this one?





Thank you in advance!

Nιlio Parreira.