The Tropical Fruit Forum

I second the Lychee recommendation!

Thanks for the heads up. I just joined!

Sorry if this has been asked. I didnt find to much when hitting the search. How many of you guys have tried rooting cuttings? Were you successful? If so what was your success rate?

Yes, you can root cuttings. If you’ve never rooted cuttings before, it can be quite a challenge and your success will be very low or zero. If you’re more experienced, you could probably easily get 50+% takes.

I would warn people, however, that rooting cuttings is like growing Yangmei seedlings, tissue cultured Yangmei, and grafting onto Rubra rootstock in that they can all get sudden death relatively easily. I started rooting cuttings about 2-3 years ago but stopped after many of my rooted cuttings died in the field. If your location is free from disease, it would be worth a try but if you’ve already lost some trees to sudden death, then I would advise you graft onto Cerifera instead.

Simon

Murahilin, it’s not showing up on my end for some reason.

Thanks for the info 70Malibu! I’ll try it out if I still can’t get it to work.

Simon

Cerifera is very easy to root from cuttings. I recommend growers test out the different rootstocks for themselves because what works at my location may not necessarily work at another location.

From my experience however, I get lots of sudden death with Rubra and Californica rootstocks. I’ve literally killed hundreds of Yangmei trees grafted on these two rootstocks but I have not lost a single tree I grafted onto Cerifera, so far.

Some people will have success with Rubra and Californica. If you have good drainage and are growing in an area with low disease pressure, you may get lucky. For me, it’s not worth the time unless it’s grafted onto Cerifera. I’ve grown out many trees I’ve grafted onto Rubra and Californica and they would grow fine for 2-3 years and then suddenly die.

I would check your soil and water pH. If the pH of your soil and water is high, certain nutrients will not be bioavailable to your plant, even if those nutrients are in the soil. Just from the looks of your plant, it could be an Iron, magnesium, Nitrogen deficiency.

Simon

This is a picture of the Princess Delight lychee that my Mom took. I need to see if I can get some more pictures from her.

I am afraid that most people would agree with you regarding Groff.

I think I have seen the lychee sudden death and believe that it is linked, at least in some cases, to armillaria.

Oh wow!!! That’s very impressive. I would definitely love to gather more information on this Princess Delight Lychee.

70Malibu, the Lychee sudden death is absolutely horrible. I’ve seen several giant trees die from this disease and the trees looked perfectly healthy before their demise.

Gods gift (Xian Jin Feng)
This variety is so far one of the easiest to fruit varieties in my collection. My potted tree is under 3 feet tall and wide but it still held onto the majority of fruit. It held so much fruit that I removed approximately 20 x quarter sized fruit. In hind sight, I would have thinned the fruit much sooner but Lychees usually have a high percentage of fruit drop but it didn’t happen with this variety.

The fruit of this variety has very prominent, dull bumps on the skin of the fruit. As the fruit ripens, it turns from green to greenish yellow to red. Unlike the Ice Lychee, this variety begins turning red in the valleys of the bumps while the bumps are yellowish and only turning red as they become fully/over ripe.

Unripe fruit going from greenish yellow to slightly red in the valleys of the bumps as ripening continues







I let this tree hold about 12 fruit and the fruit is elongated and somewhat skinny. The fruit are probably skinny (not filled in) because every single fruit, so far, were chicken tongue seeds.

I made the mistake of letting the fruit turn fully red but it seems that this variety is best picked before the bumps turn fully red. The Brix on the fully red colored fruit was 1-2% Brix lower than the fruit that still had some yellow on the bumps. The fully red fruit also tasted slightly over ripe.
So far this year, they taste best at this stage before they turn completely red

This variety has a mild Lychee/Rose aroma but please note that my trees are small, in pots and “Terroir” greatly affects the overall taste of Lychees. This variety has a thick peel and not a single fruit has cracked during the sizing up period. As mentioned earlier, I’ve had 100% chicken tongue seeds for this variety so far.






























The taste of this variety is similar to a Sweeheart but I did not detect and noticeable tannin as I do with Sweetheart. Sweetheart has a bit more honey notes than this variety. I can see this variety as being a replacement for Sweetheart if the production keeps up. I believe the fruit will also get larger as the tree matures and I’m eager to see how a fruit tastes if it does not have aborted seeds. With the precocity of this variety, it’s definitely a keeper.

Simon

Simon, that Bing Li looks very interesting. The closest thing that I have personal experience with is Groff. It is about that size and has a similar appearance. Have you ever tasted Groff to compare the two?

The funny back story behind the Princess Delight tree is that I told my Dad not to plant it. We found it growing under an Emperor tree in the grove that was planted next to a Florida Haak Yip (which I believe has been correctly identified as a strain of the Chinese variety Fei Zi Xiao at this point). Dad liked the look of the little tree (which had less than a dozen leaves at the time) and decided to transplant it against my advice and his own prior experience. He has grown a number of other seedling trees over the years (all with miserable fruit quality) including one that still has not fruited after 39 years. Against all odds, the Princess Delight tree fruited after only 6 years and has exceeded all expectations thus far.

In appearance it is very similar to Emperor. So, at first I was not that excited. But, then we found that unlike Emperor many of the fully formed 40 gram fruits had tiny abortive seeds. Occasionally, an Emperor tree will have tiny seeds in our grove, but the fruits are usually runty (10 gram range). I have never seen a fruit that large with seeds that small. The flavor was also better than Emperor (which as I recall was coming in between 16 and 19 brix depending on the tree). Princess Delight was coming in around 20 consistently. I hope it continues again this year.

Thank you for the background information, I love hearing the full story behind seedling trees! I’m glad that your dad didn’t listen to you, lol. I would definitely recommend spreading some scions around so that you don’t lose that variety if something happens to the original tree.

There is a disease that is killing Lychee trees and it can kill a giant tree in a matter of weeks. This sudden Lychee death (for lack of taxonomic identification) killed Leo Manuel’s giant Brewster and I’ve had over 20 reports from members at various locations that their trees died in a similar manner. The Lychee sudden death is first noticed when you see leaves suddenly turning Brown and they remain attached to the leaves. The cambium of affected limbs then starts drying out and getting a wrinkled look before they completely dry up. Just something we need to keep our eyes out for.

Galatians522, huge fruit with chicken tongue seeds is something very special so you should definitely collect data on this variety. The weights, Brix, % of chicken tongue seeds and any other data you can get. Some varieties get a lot of cracking so this is another good bit of info that would be useful.

Simon

Ice Lychee (Bing Li)

My Ice Lychee is grafted and the tree grows at an average rate for a Lychee tree. This particular tree is only about 3 feet tall and about 3 feet wide. The leaves are a vivid, glossy forest green with a slight yellow undertone.



It is my understanding that growers are now grafting slower growing varieties onto vigorous seedling rootstocks in order to increase the growth rate of slower growing varieties like No Mai Tsze.

I do not recommend letting small trees hold fruit as this will slow their growth during the critical early establishment years, especially in SoCal where our climate is cooler and more arid compared to Southern Florida. I only allowed my trees to hold fruit at a small size in the name of science and to vet the variety. It is extremely important to allow Lychees trees to reach a critical size of approximately 4-5 feet tall and wide before allowing the tree to hold fruit.

Young Lychee trees (their new leaves) are extremely prone to strong dry winds which cause new growth to completely dry out or can disfigure and tatter the leaves. Lychee trees grow from a series of 2-3 growth flushes (in SoCal) and if one of these flushes gets damaged, it could severely slow the growth of the tree for that year. Allowing young trees to hold fruit will pull energy that would otherwise have gone into vegetative growth and place it into the development of fruit instead.

Once a Lychee tree reaches about 4-5 feet tall and wide, the outer canopy is large enough to slightly shelter the inner canopy from desiccating winds. At this critical mass of leaves, the tree usually has enough leaves (I like to think of them as solar panels) to power the tree and store enough carbohydrates (energy) for its next flush. At this critical mass, the canopy is also large enough to begin shading the root zone (rhizosphere).

Lychee trees benefit from a thick mulch layer that can help maintain soil moisture levels and moderate the effects of dry winds and the hot sun. A thick mulch layer also creates a more accommodating environment for arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi which may improve nutrient uptake and increase growth and productivity.

The first few fruit of this variety from my small potted tree produced smaller fruit of 15-18g.  The fruit should get larger once the tree gets planted in ground and especially once it gets bigger. The fruit pericarp is red, bumpy and moderately sharp when fully mature. Immature fruit will have a yellowish tinge in the valley of the bumps. The skin (pericarp) is moderately thick and this variety appears to be resistant to cracking.
Immature fruit with yellow in the valleys of the bumps




Mature fruit full red



Weights and Brix


















The fruit has a Brix of 20.4% and tastes sweet with a mild Lychee/Rose flavor and aroma. The quality of Lychee fruit is greatly affected by the terroir or environmental factors such as soil, water, climate so in order to bring out the best flavors of each variety, I really need to get these trees into the ground and let the root system establish.

It should be noted that my descriptions of the fruit quality from young, potted trees is likely going to be a worse case scenario and the quality should only get better as the trees mature and definitely when they get established in ground.

So far, the pros of this variety is the lack of cracking in the fruit, ability for small trees to set and mature fruit, beautiful fruit color, great taste, good Brix and relatively small seed. Since my tree is so small, I only allowed it to hold 2 fruit and one fruit was a chicken tongue and the other was fully formed but medium small in size.

Simon

Bosworth 3 is an excellent fruit with a sweet taste so it’s an excellent addition to any Lychee collection. Definitely a keeper!

It was extremely sweet, chalky, rich and creamy. It tasted like a Pina colada with very low acid balance with a creaminess of a Gary. I believe it was the sweetest mango but due to the lack of acid balance, it was not in my top 3.