The Tropical Fruit Forum

Well the rain sure is here with about double the usual rain for the last 5 months since the wet season began early and another 150mm last night. Somewhere has to be drier to compensate.

Mafai are typically the thai ones but they come in a variety of forms and fruit colours. Some look a lot like rambai even but the purple seeds give their identity away. There are a few 50 footers on my street in a bit of regrowth by the road. They sure have heavy crops. Speaking of big trees santols get get very large indeed.

They self pollinate well here including gold ones. Birds and bats leave the flowers alone but ruin fruit. Flowers seems to have ants,thrips, tiny beetles and ants but are visited by small native bees. Soursop don't usually set fruit in their first flowering season. My mongrel morado has flowered for years without setting a fruit but other varieties I have are bountiful.

My 2 bisex ones are often humming with insects and can pollinate their own flowers. The female trees I am aware of can set fruit without any male flowers being present. Presumabley the sparse ring of anthers are actually pollen bearing or they are doing a 'mangosteen'.

They can take a bit of leaf trimming and are a bit smaller than coconut leaves

My 13 yo male has had many thousands of flowers......and individual clusters can have 50. It produced one stray female flower once and I have checked it thoroughly. For about 5 or 6 years my 2 bisex Lucs have produced many thousands of flowers and the  ratio seems frozen at around 5% female flowers. The 3 mature female trees I know including mine have only produced female flowers.   

Ok there are around 20 species in the genus and they are related to calamus, unsurprisingly. The 2 best edible species are Salacca zalacca which come in 2 forms each with around 20 varieties, that is bali form amboina which is a small mono with good fruit. Gula Pasir from the eastern highlands are amongst the best. Salacca zalacca var zallacca is big has separate sexes and yogyarta is a good one and it has a few names. S.wallichiana from thailand has the wilder types sakum and rakum and the domesticated sala. Sexes are separate and they are big and thorny. Noen wong and sala variety sumalee are the best. Multiseeded fruit of sala are reputed to produce more female plants but suckers are better for propogation in all varieties and edible species.

Everything will be alright doesn't jive with me either. The climate change is normal and fluctuations are natural camp doesn't have many survivors these days. And the god will look after us camp was abandoned long ago. CO2 levels need to fall and emissions get increasing and vegetation clearing continues unabated.

What is the fruit like?

Achacha is too slow just use brasiliensis, intermedia or gardneriana and they flower straight away. My jumbo has its first flowers btw. There is no such thing as G.acuminata and when you see pics its obvious why.

It has been an aberrant El Nino which usually creates droughts in Eastern and Northern Australia and was predicted to do so. The reverse was true.

The time machine will need to go back more than 30 years. There is quite a story about the place.

That Ficus sure had a Pouteria vibe going on at a distance. I know there are dozens of fig species wild in my area so they can be hard to pin down.