The Tropical Fruit Forum

I got this one from CCPP a couple years ago and last season I had the first flower (just one) which set a fruit. It got blown off (prematurely, I think) by a wind storm last night.





I had heard from the UC person that it is horrible tasting, but I juiced it and the juice wasn't that terrible. Tasted somewhere on the lemon to grapefruit spectrum, none of that weird trifoliate funk, but you'd have to sweeten it a lot (or hope it gets a lot more sweet when more ripe) before anyone would label it enjoyable.

The seeds have an interesting distinctive reddish patch on the bottom end:



Here's the UC accession description:

https://citrusvariety.ucr.edu/crc3881

Most of my subtropical stuff has to tough it out in the greenhouse, where it's usually in the mid-30s to 40s (°F) for most of the winter. Each year, a few lucky plants come in to a sunny window in my house. So far I've already brought in these, and have room for one more tree:

• Key lime
• Persian lime
• A seedling of my brother's mango tree
• A guava (P. guajava)
• A jaboticaba (bonsai candidate)

Which one would you add?

I am located in Washington state, which has no restrictions on importing citrus, but I would still prefer to only source this from someone who is not in a HLB quarantine area.

I'm looking for either Prague budwood or a small grafted tree that can easily be shipped. Happy to pay any reasonable price.

I grafted some more than a year ago on a few multi-graft trees, and the grafts never grew (also never died!) but I'm tired of waiting for those to either grow or die. I got the scions from Stan McKenzie but he hasn't had any available this year on his Etsy shop unless I missed it.

I've often seen it said that key limes are among the least cold-tolerant of all citrus, and they do seem to die rather quickly during even a brief exposure to "hard freeze" temperatures. But in my mostly unheated greenhouse here in the "cool mediterranean" climate of Seattle, they seem to be among the most tolerant of non-freezing but persistently cool temperatures.

Whereas mandarins, Persian limes, and lemons get a sickly yellow color after months on end of lows in the 30s-40s and highs often in the 40s and rarely above 60 (all in °F), the key limes not only stayed dark green, they were the first to push a new spring flush.

Has anyone else in cooler mediterranean climates noticed this? I was mostly growing these seedlings as a novelty, but after seeing their performance for a winter in the greenhouse, I'm thinking I'll put one in the ground in there permanently.

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:

One of the things that has done really well in my cold greenhouse over the last couple years is the Monstera that I bought as a small quart size tissue culture start and planted in the ground. It was alleged to be deliciosa, but I'm starting to question that ID as the leaves are smaller than I expect for that species, but maybe they will get larger over time.

In any case, it has started spreading a bit, and I'm considering letting it grow across the leaf litter and wood chip mulch under the avocado and citrus trees in the greenhouse, but I'm not sure if it is going to cause the trees any problems.

Does anyone have experience growing Monstera as a ground cover among avocados and/or citrus?

My in-laws are in Miami, they have a key lime they planted a couple years ago. This year all the leaves look twisted like this. Is this maybe HLB?

I grafted Kishu scions (from CCPP) onto a few citrus in my greenhouse this spring. One of the grafts I did mainly as "security" in case the others all failed, was a cleft graft onto my TDE3 (Tahoe Gold) tree. That one did take, along with another one on a lemon seedling. The graft on a lemon looks fine, but for some reason the graft on TDE3 has completely yellow leaves, even though the TDE3 itself looks ok. Since the other graft looks fine I'll probably just remove this one soon:

I can't think of any reason these wouldn't be graft compatible, but that's the only explanation I can think of for the appearance. Any other ideas?

I planted a 1 gal pup of a Dwarf Cavendish banana in the ground in my greenhouse in spring 2021. It grew great that summer, then stopped growing over the winter, and started again the next spring. Last year it reached about 8' by the time it stopped growing in the fall, here's a photo from mid-October, it only unfurled one more leaf after the one unfurling here:



It looked fine for the first part of the winter, nice green leaves for the most part, with only the oldest leaves getting a little yellow from the cold temperatures. Here's a photo from mid-January:



Then, a little over a month ago, the leaves started dying at a rate of about one or two per week, from the bottom up. This was what it looked like by February 20, with most of the leaves dead but the inner leaves still mostly green:





Yesterday, I decided it was completely dead, it was almost a foot shorter than before (shriveled), the cigar was brown:



When I cut into the top, the heart was brown and soft:


As I cut off chunks to remove the rest of the p-stem, it started smelling a sickly sweet scent, similar to fermentation, and by the base it was very gooey and definitely starting to rot:


I had watered it pretty regularly, and tested with an orchard soil moisture probe so I only watered when it was medium-dry or drier. I don't think the problem was watering-related.

There had been a LOT of rain recently, and it's possible there's a deep perched water table that the roots didn't reach last year but they were waterlogged deep this year?

The weather was cold, but not colder than the previous year when it over-wintered fine.

My leading theory is some kind of soil pathogen that was able to attack easier in the winter when the defenses were down, but no clue what pathogen that might be.

Any thoughts?

My brother lives in what I believe is a historically Haitian neighborhood in Ft. Lauderdale, and his house came with a very large mango tree, far too thick to reach your arms around the trunk. We estimate 30+, maybe 50+ year old tree. There's no obvious sign of a graft, but on a gnarled old trunk that might be easy to miss.

It produces a pretty heavy crop of enormous fruit each year, and I had them send me one last year so I could try it since I'm never in south FL in the right time of year to catch them. This was apparently a little larger than average, but not the largest, weighing in at just over 3 lbs:



Here it is with a store-bought Ataulfo for comparison:



This is what it looked like fully ripened (maybe even a day or two over-ripe):



I sadly didn't take any photos of it cut open (we were camping and my hands were way too sticky, and it was devoured too fast), but here's what the seed looked like (the compass has a scale):



The seed was mono-embryonic and already very much sprouted, this is what it looked like as soon as I removed the seed case:



I'm growing the seedling in my greenhouse and it's done fine so far, but growing very slowly.

So that brings me to the point of this thread, does this fruit seem to match any known cultivars? My first guess was Madame Francis because the fruit shape seems roughly correct, but (1) these seem larger, (2) they don't turn as yellow when ripe, and (3) from what I can find Madame Francis is usually polyembryonic.

Without an obvious graft union, I'm thinking maybe this was a zygotic seedling of Madame Francis. Any other ideas?

I picked up a couple black sapotes from "Robert Is Here" in south FL last week, and saved 8 seeds. They are in a bag in a warm place with a slightly damp paper towel, but it just occurred to me that I'm not sure if these need some kind of stratification first. Does anyone have experience sprouting these? Any tricks or preferred techniques?

I'm a couple years into a long-term avocado breeding effort here in the Seattle area, and starting next spring I'll be delivering trees to anyone in this broader region who wants to join the project. Here's the sign-up form:

https://drymifolia.org/join.php

I'm skeptical of the hardiness claims some people have made for certain avocado cultivars, but I'll be testing both grafted trees and intentionally crossed seedlings of allegedly hardy cultivars, which I'm growing in my greenhouse to produce seeds and scions.

As that website explains, you should expect most of the trees distributed in the project to die or suffer badly, but if any prove hardy here I'll be propagating those and sharing them with members of the project to test them further.

I'll be focusing on zone 8b+ in western WA for this first delivery, but anyone in this broader region in zone 8+ is encouraged to sign up, and in the next few years I'm planning to expand a little further each year.

P.S. I know this topic is borderline "temperate fruit trees" but still seems like avocado discussion is usually on the tropical side of this forum, so that's where I'm posting it.

Greetings! I'm in search of either seeds or scions of any Mexican-race avocados (named cultivars or unnamed trees with anise scented leaves). I can trade scions of varieties I already have or pay for them, your choice.

I want seeds of any variety, including ones I already have, but obviously only scionwood from other ones. I would want the scions starting in late February or March, when my greenhouse trees start waking up, but that is flexible and I can bench graft indoors in a pinch if you need to send sooner.

Here's what I have currently, the ones that are bold are large enough to cut this winter or early next spring, the rest are recent grafts or have been cut a lot already and can't be cut until later next year at the earliest:

Aravaipa

Brazos Belle

Duke (from the Oroville train station)

Del Rio

Ganter

Jade (a backyard tree from Gainesville, FL)

Joey

Linh (backyard tree from northern CA)

Long South Gate (a backyard tree from Los Angeles area)

Mayo

Northrop/Northrup

"Not Mexicola" (from an Etsy seller who collected scions from a tree in a public park in CA with fruit similar to Mexicola)

Poncho

Rincon Valley (street tree near Santa Rosa, might be Mexicola)

Royal-Wright

Stewart

Teague

Walter Hole