another precocious Eugenia - sp. "Pitangão Amarelo da Unicamp"

[brian]

That looks right... do you have these growing as a different name?

[NateTheGreat]

https://www.youtube.com/live/igHwzp1VC4U?feature=shared&t=420 @7:00

[FlyingFoxFruits]

resin flavor kept intensifying after I ate it...it's ok fruit, but not if you hate Suriname resins...

I could see myself letting a big crop of these go to waste....but maybe flavor improves and I ate this first fruit a little too early...I see they get reddish...

and it's easy enough to grow, pretty little tree.

not something I'm real excited about personally.

[FlyingFoxFruits]

try to peel n eat, maybe the resin is mostly in the skin, im pretty sure it is, because the first bite and chew was nice, then as I got into the skin the resin really picked up the pace...

[daisyguy]

My fruit are getting ripe enough to drop and I give it a bad review. They are very seedy, the pulp/skin are kind of leathery and fibrous, and the taste is moderately sour and grassy? It tastes like a weed rather than something people would eat. The fruit smells grassy rather than fruity. It doesn't remind me of acerola at all, and definitely not "sweeter and more pleasant" than acerola.

[K-Rimes]

Another bunk eugenia for the chronicles.

[Julian R]

My fruit are getting ripe enough to drop and I give it a bad review. They are very seedy, the pulp/skin are kind of leathery and fibrous, and the taste is moderately sour and grassy? It tastes like a weed rather than something people would eat. The fruit smells grassy rather than fruity. It doesn't remind me of acerola at all, and definitely not "sweeter and more pleasant" than acerola.

Looks like garlic stuffed habaneros!

[Jaboticaba45]

Funny thing is someone said Helton himself recommended this one☠️
Idk guys, we cooked at this point with eugenias it seems

[SHV]

My fruit are getting ripe enough to drop and I give it a bad review. They are very seedy, the pulp/skin are kind of leathery and fibrous, and the taste is moderately sour and grassy? It tastes like a weed rather than something people would eat. The fruit smells grassy rather than fruity. It doesn't remind me of acerola at all, and definitely not "sweeter and more pleasant" than acerola.

Damnit, that looks terrible!  That’s beyond landing on a bad selection of the species.  It’s basically a leather seed pouch.

[brian]

I noticed a week or two ago that one of my fruits on this tree was turning orange as expected, then I forgot about it.  And now the fruit is nowhere to be found, likely it fell off in one of the many storms we had lately, and/or an animal snatched it.  Oh well, I see more flowers and fruitlets.  I'll report back when I get to try it.  It doesn't sound like it is good eating anyway.

[brian]

I found a recently fallen fruit at the bottom of the pot on mine, and ate it.  Mine was very soft and springy like a tiny water balloon or a soft wad of bubble gum, and sort of burst when I bit into it.  Mine only had one tiny seed, not three huge ones like in the picture above.  The taste was meh, though.  Somewhat sour, not sweet.  Not unpleasant, but not something that seems worth growing.  Maybe if mine continues to produce fruits with high flesh to seed ration and good texture it might be worth cross-breeding?  I'll report back as I get to try more fruits from it.


EDIT - this fruit was some other eugenia that had fallen into the pot, maybe a uvaia

[brian]

Nevermind, the fruit I reported on above is not pitangao amarelo da unicamp, it is some other eugenia that has fruited for the first time without me noticing, maybe e. pyriformis.

I just picked a ripe pitangao amarelo da unicamp from the tree and it looks just like daisyguy's pictures.  Tastes like carrot to me, not much flavor neither sweet nor sour.  Mine only had one seed and so a decent flesh/seed ratio but I don't think anyone would ever choose to eat this fruit given the other options available.

[brian]

I had another one of these fruits mature.  It was considerably sweeter than the previous ones and with more edible flesh, but still overall poor tasting

[smitchell7]

Genuinely no shade to anyone who likes growing eugenias, but I've noticed a general consensus that about 90% of eugenia fruits being mediocre to awful, so why is there so much hype around growing and collecting them. Is it just because they're ornamental and fruit at small sizes?

[Jaboticaba45]

Genuinely no shade to anyone who likes growing eugenias, but I've noticed a general consensus that about 90% of eugenia fruits being mediocre to awful, so why is there so much hype around growing and collecting them. Is it just because they're ornamental and fruit at small sizes?

Yes...also a lot of sellers in Brazil and elsewhere overhyped them when they realized they could manipulate the USA seed market.
There are some decent and even good/great ones out there, but most likely, most eugenias will not top a top-quality temperate cherry.
It's cool to grow them though cause they are quick to fruit and it is exciting to be one of the first people in USA to fruit a new species.

[W.]

Genuinely no shade to anyone who likes growing eugenias, but I've noticed a general consensus that about 90% of eugenia fruits being mediocre to awful, so why is there so much hype around growing and collecting them. Is it just because they're ornamental and fruit at small sizes?

Yes...also a lot of sellers in Brazil and elsewhere overhyped them when they realized they could manipulate the USA seed market.
There are some decent and even good/great ones out there, but most likely, most eugenias will not top a top-quality temperate cherry.
It's cool to grow them though cause they are quick to fruit and it is exciting to be one of the first people in USA to fruit a new species.

It is possible that we have all been duped into believing that there are hundreds of species of high-quality Eugenias. There is also the possibility that there are delicious tasting fruits from some (or even many) of these Eugenias species in their native range but that not every plant of those species produces great fruit. Since Eugenias are not true-to-type, that deliciousness would not necessarily be passed on the any progeny. It has taken hundreds, in some cases thousands, of years of breeding and selection to produce the best tasting apples, plums, cherries, grapes, etc. and in the end they're propagated through cuttings and grafting. Grow any of those things from seed, and you're not guaranteed to get something exceptional. Hell, we don't even have reliable fruit quality from seed-grown Eugenias that are known to be delicious. Compare a random seed-grown Eugenia uniflora to a Zill Dark. Cherry of the Rio Grande varies in size, color, and taste from plant to plant. Helton may have a Pitangão Amarelo da Unicamp plant that tastes great, but that great tasting fruit may only be passed down to 50% or 10% or 1% of its progeny and only appear when the plant is several years old. Before greening wiped them all out, Duncan grapefruits were by far the sweetest grapefruit variety, but young ones were just about as bitter as a standard red grapefruit; it took nearly twenty years for that sweetness to really increase, and the best trees were ones over fifty years old. I agree that there is a little too much hype around the newest Eugenias (and other fruits), but I think these plants should still be grown. Growers should just keep in mind that they are on the absolute cutting edge, experimenting and exploring, the equivalent of someone a thousand years ago on the Central Asian steppes who thought there might be something to this new small red fruit found there—the apple.

[BP]

Genuinely no shade to anyone who likes growing eugenias, but I've noticed a general consensus that about 90% of eugenia fruits being mediocre to awful, so why is there so much hype around growing and collecting them. Is it just because they're ornamental and fruit at small sizes?

Yes...also a lot of sellers in Brazil and elsewhere overhyped them when they realized they could manipulate the USA seed market.
There are some decent and even good/great ones out there, but most likely, most eugenias will not top a top-quality temperate cherry.
It's cool to grow them though cause they are quick to fruit and it is exciting to be one of the first people in USA to fruit a new species.

It is possible that we have all been duped into believing that there are hundreds of species of high-quality Eugenias. There is also the possibility that there are delicious tasting fruits from some (or even many) of these Eugenias species in their native range but that not every plant of those species produces great fruit. Since Eugenias are not true-to-type, that deliciousness would not necessarily be passed on the any progeny. It has taken hundreds, in some cases thousands, of years of breeding and selection to produce the best tasting apples, plums, cherries, grapes, etc. and in the end they're propagated through cuttings and grafting. Grow any of those things from seed, and you're not guaranteed to get something exceptional. Hell, we don't even have reliable fruit quality from seed-grown Eugenias that are known to be delicious. Compare a random seed-grown Eugenia uniflora to a Zill Dark. Cherry of the Rio Grande varies in size, color, and taste from plant to plant. Helton may have a Pitangão Amarelo da Unicamp plant that tastes great, but that great tasting fruit may only be passed down to 50% or 10% or 1% of its progeny and only appear when the plant is several years old. Before greening wiped them all out, Duncan grapefruits were by far the sweetest grapefruit variety, but young ones were just about as bitter as a standard red grapefruit; it took nearly twenty years for that sweetness to really increase, and the best trees were ones over fifty years old. I agree that there is a little too much hype around the newest Eugenias (and other fruits), but I think these plants should still be grown. Growers should just keep in mind that they are on the absolute cutting edge, experimenting and exploring, the equivalent of someone a thousand years ago on the Central Asian steppes who thought there might be something to this new small red fruit found there—the apple.

Dang, good sell, I gotta get some Eugenias! Sounds exciting haha