Psidium myrtoides aka Araçá-Una... I finally found a tasty one!

[Miguel.pt]

Hello again
 
Here are my litle contribution for the discussions about this Psidium species whose fruits are known in Brazil as “Araçá-Una”.
 
There are many places online where you can find this Araçá-Una going by the scientific name Psidium eugeniaefolia.
Me too when I first received these seeds from Helton they arrived to me labelled as Psidium eugeniaefolia, and back then, by 2007 I think, I received another species labelled as Psidium myrtoides that some years later gave me fruits that were different from the regular Araçá-Una….

As I said many times before I’ve grown and fruited both those species (both seeds from Helton) but eventually eliminated them from my collection because those fruits were terribly acid and astringent, and almost unedible...
But some time ago, one fruit collector friend, told me he was growing a tasty variety of this Araçá-Una… I had to visit my friend during the fruiting season of his tree so to try this fruit for myself as I was a little bit sceptic after my first experience with this one… but fortunately it was true and my friend gave me one small tree that I have growing here at my place and it is also fruiting now!... YEEESSSS!!!!!
 
This Araçá-Una variety fruits are still on the acid side, but very tasty and enjoyable right from the tree…. and definitely much better than the previous ones I had.
 
After digging a litle deeper on the proper scientific ID of this Araçá-Una I decided to follow Mr. Harri Lorenzi that calls this species Psidium myrtoides (Pag.nº482 on the new book Frutas no Brasil).... Mr. Lorenzi doesn't use the name P. eugeniaefolia, not even as a synonimy.
 
Here  some pics of my fruits:

[huertasurbanas]

Super cool Miguel, but I didnt got it:

are you saying that pisidum eugeniaefolia doesnt exists?

I grow 3 plants of this supposed species, and 2 of them are flowering now and fruiting for the first time, seeds from USA or Madeira.

And today a seed from a supposed psidium myrtoides from Brasil just sprouted... so it would be a mistery to me to taste both of them...

[Miguel.pt]

Hi Marcos

Sorry late reply but I'm always travelling... I just saw this last post from you and actually I'm answering you being abroad now (north Africa).

Regarding the controversy ID on this one, P. eugeniaefolia versus P. myrtoides, I have no more data to add to this discussion, and I just decided to follow Mr. Lorenzi on his last book.

By the way let me show you some photos I've made of juice and ice-cream I've made with this year crop... I've obtained a beautifull, tasty and nicely red colored juice (fruits blended with water and just a litle sugar added)



I also tried to make some "picolés" (Ice cream) like the Brasilians do... even if I only had some ice-cubes trays to do it the final result was fantastic and definitly I will repeat this next years




I finnaly understood why this Ice-cream is so popular in Brasil... Highly recomended!

[huertasurbanas]

Too good, the colour is great! My parents have a supposed p. eugeniaefolia (3 years old seedling, seeds from USA, I think...) fruiting for the first time, I hope the fruit would be good, will report later. And I have a recently sprouted psidium myroides from Vitor, Brasil. Just 1 tiny plant... :-S

An icecream store was making icecreams with my guavas last year (very nice), and they wanna produce icecreams with any of my fruits, so this species should be a hit. Thanks for confirming it!!!