The Tropical Fruit Forum

California ground squirrels may be native but they need a serious population decrease. If were talking plants only...lets just say if you plant celery in N San Diego County area and let it go to seed you'll never need to buy celery again!

Indeed, and related to celery, the same can be said with fennel around coastal LA county.  It is very hard to eradicate and extremely drought tolerant. Thankfully a useful weed if you like to use young fennel leaves or flowers for culinary purposes.

As big island grower said very few people on this forum live in the tropics, the forum could be renamed the florida mango forum really.  For those of us who live in the tropics are all most certainly growing the things you are talking about, all relatively common around here.

Haha so true. I remember an idea being floated around, about a year or two ago to make a Mango-only sub-forum given the amount of mango talk.

I do live in the tropics, but my location is a bit unique in being a lowland location with a very distinct and hot dry season which makes us almost a desert for 4 months. If one can get a tree established in the poor and relatively thin soils (involves hammering out a hole from the limestone bedrock and using lots of organic matter), we do however have an ocean of water only 2 metres below the surface. Once the roots hit that, its game on. My 5 year old Jackfruit crossed that barrier this year and is setting an insane amount of fruit now.  Mangosteen and its glacial growth rate will take more time. Longan and Long Kong are constantly flushing new growth and will need a haircut soon so I think their roots have found a way down through the fissures in the bedrock.

Brazilian Peppertree
Earleaf Acacia is a really bad one- even worse than peppertree.
Any of the native exotic vines- that's why fires are good because they burn all that crap out.
Queen palm- drops 1000's of seeds and they have high germination rates and grow quickly.

Probably some grasses and sedges- but they all get mowed.

When I lived in Santa Monica, there was a Brazilian Peppertree on public property about 10 yards from my garden. Never-ending suckers coming up all over the place, which were impossible to eradicate.

As for here in Merida, I have issues with Hoja Santa (Mexican Pepperleaf), which I naively planted as part of my kitchen garden (the leaves are used in Oaxacan cooking) and is spreading underground like wildfire and popping up everywhere. Thankfully the chickens like it so I let them out to peck on the shoots.

Also, and surprisingly as it is a protected species in Mexico, is the Chit Palm (aka Florida Thatch Palm [Thrinax radiata]). I believe it is suffering from habitat loss, but I have several mature palms in my garden, and the fruit and seeds are super abundant and sprout everywhere. My lawn and planters are full of sprouted Chits and I am forever pulling them up.  Speaking from my experience with the seeds, it wouldn't take much to get this palm re-populated in any area it has been lost from.

At the moment, no real issues with invasive animals, birds, or insects in my area other than African Honey Bees which are out-competing the very vital local Melipona bees.

For Congo rubber (Landolphia owariensis), I know forum member Fermamo2002 sells these seeds from time to time, but they are based in Cameroon. I've ordered other items from them before to Mexico and received my order just fine (Cameroon postal service, has tracking but doesn't update lol), but he/she is reliable.

In my experience here in Yucatan, the Salak are trouble free. Lots of water, shady-filtered light, and lots of organic matter and they grow great.  I have 5 plants in 3 gallon bags at about 4 feet high, and about 15 seedlings in 4 inch pots about to put out their second set of leaves and urgently need potting up.  They get hit both foliar and to the soil with my own-recipe half strength compost tea every so often.

As for Cacao, I agree with Daintree in the idea of raising them from seed in place. Those I have bought from other locations never seem to do as well as those I have planted from seed from a fresh pod. In fact, I have a handful of trees at about 3-4 feet in 7 gallon air-pots that are only 13 months old, and have overtaken the trees I bought. All raised int he same location and given the same soil, shade, and feeding regime. I will stress that these do take more care than the Salak, particularly with my alkaline soil, and they need frequent foliar and soil applied compost-tea to thrive. I suspect my alkaline well-water is the culprit, but with the amount of watering I go through, both for Cacao and the garden at large, it is easier for me to add my compost-tea (which has pH Down in it) to counteract the regular water.

We will see how all these containerised trees do once they go down to my new land in summer.  I am hopeful that the cacao do well as the location is not to far from the Belcolade cacao criollo plantation (50,000 trees), and they thrive there.

Really feel for you all up there in Florida, must be devastating.

Even down here in Yucatan we're breaking cold records. I live on the edge of the urban area so see lower temps than more central parts of Merida and got down to about 8c last night according to my local official weather station. Only a 5 minute drive further out got down to 3c (39f) and I'm sure there were some sheltered spots got down to freezing. Most trees I have will ride this out but I have several seedling-sized ultra-tropicals like Kepel, Breadfruit, Jackfruit are toast. This combination of cold rain and strong winds Saturday AM followed by rapidly plunging temps and dew points likely the culprit. A cold night Saturday followed by a whole day of cool weather and dry air yesterday and a very still cold night last night.

Haven't inspected all the larger sapling trees in planters yet, but expecting to see some damage to others like Durian. I think a big watering is on the cards this afternoon with my relatively warm well water and then we should see a couple of relatively warmer (but not warm) nights before another less-vigorous cold front on Thursday.

I have a sapling Tonka Bean here in Yucatan, of which I've had about one year, so my experience isn't great. I've found that it is reasonably drought tolerant in our dry season, but does like acidic conditions (I have limestone soil and alkaline well water so does need help with micro nutrients particularly).

From my understanding, temperature-wise, they don't like cold conditions below 55degF so may not be very suitable to California conditions. You may get away with it close to the ocean in Ventura, but even just a few miles inland might get too cold. I used to live 5 blocks from the beach in Santa Monica and could grow a fair range of hardy tropicals that were near impossible in Culver City without a greenhouse or some cold protection.

Ultimately you could give it a try if you have the space and it doesn't cost you much. I'm all for zone pushing and do the same (but opposite) for sub-tropicals or mountainous tropicals here in our very hot wet-dry climate.

Please check your inbox. I messaged several days ago.

I actually just harvested some fruit in Playa del Carmen with the same characteristics. The difference in size wasn't clear to me either. I only planted the larger seeds.

Hi Daniel, long time no hear!  Interesting that you got mostly small seeds too, but at least a few larger ones. Perhaps I need to go bak and collect a few more fruit to see if I can find some larger seeds. If you do successfully germinate the small seeds, I'd be interested to hear.  Happy New Year!

Thank you for everyone's answers so far. I realized that if you zoom in on the picture on my first post, you can see in the opened fruit where the tiny small/aborted seeds are, just visible in the flesh. Of all the fruit I checked, they have been the same. I'm very curious as to why this would be. The tree is large and well-established, so it would seem that age is not the issue.

Just following up for other buyers. I ordered from Fermamo and I did indeed receive what I ordered so I just wanted to reassure people who might be interested in seeds, that the seller is legitimate and sends what was ordered.

Given the limitations of the Mexican postal service, and possibly the Cameroon one, it did take 6 weeks to arrive, so viability may be a question, but this is not in any way apportioned to the seller.

I've gone from zero fruit set to plenty of fruit, but the critters or birds taking them before they're ripe enough to pick. So that's my next problem to solve.

Interested to buy (sending to Mexico), please send PM to discuss details.