The Tropical Fruit Forum

Steve, I just tasted my first Wampee a few weeks ago, it was the Chicken Heart. Taste was not bad at all. I'm going to grow the seeds from the fruits.

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Till,

This is not related to this post but I wanted to say that I have a large FD tree (old, 30yrs) and I never tasted the juice since the first time I tried the juice years ago and it was really bad, hard to drink any of it. But this year, a neighbor asked if he could have the juice from the FD fruits (100 fruits) for his mixed drink so I squeezed the fruits for my seeds and gave him his juice. I asked a person who was working on my kitchen remodel to try it and tell me if it is terrible or super sour. He said it was fine, he could eat the flesh or drink the juice like lemon or lime. I tried a few fruits, and he was right, it was not bad tasting. So my question is, why did my FD fruits taste better now than years ago?

I do have two types of FD on my tree, the original rootstock tree and the branches I grafted with the UCR/CCPP budwood:

VI-383   FLYING DRAGON TRIFOLIATE (CRC 3330A)
VI-397   HIRYU FLYING DRAGON TRIFOLIATE (CRC 3882)

I can see your photo. That is a large tree, what a bargin price. I have a few small Sweetheart trees in pots, but your price is great for such a large tree.

Ok, I did find the old post where Har mentioned Smathers was a wooly leaf white sapote. A few others also mentioned and show photos of the fruit showing it is yellow inside. My Younghan's Gold has much more yellow color than the one shown in the photo here in this old post started by Flying Fox Fruits back in 2012.

https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=735.0

Here's the photo from the old 2012 post below.


This is the post where I read what Jack said on page 2, that the Wooly Leaf and Yellow sapote is the C. Tetrameria so that is the reason Mango Stein I called this post title "C. Tetrameria".

I'm updating the table to show my Smathers is a yellow sapote. I forgot I grafted the Smathers on my tree. I will check the leaves to see if it has the wooly leaf.

Ok, you guys convinced me to buy a few trees. I ended up ordering the NZ varieties (4) that
Tropical Sunshine mentioned. I will plant them in ground, then graft all of them onto one tree that grows the best. Get rid of the others in another year since I don't have much space at all in my front and back yard. I am cutting down most of my mulberry trees and some large loquat trees so I can build some sheds for storing my other hobby (motorcycles).

Seanny, yes you're right, it does seem to affect the fruit shape and rind texture. I was very surprised to see how different the two trees fruits are growing.

Ckitto, thanks for posting your fruit photos. I will post the Cocktail green fruits on the Lane Late orange tree. I will need to find the photos I took a week ago. The Cocktail fruits on this navel orange tree have the same shape and smooth skin as yours. It looks like your fruits are in bunches, the Cocktail grapefruit trees seems to get a lot of fruits on the branches. I had to thin the fruits on this grafted tree since there were so many fruits on the tree, it was bending all the branches to the ground. I used 10 heavy duty metal stakes (6 ft) to try to support the branches with fruits. I ended up removing half the fruits from every branch.

On my original tree where I grafted this Cocktail grapefruit scion wood 30 yrs ago, the branches are huge. The rootstock/interstock variety was a grapefruit tree. I didn't care for the grapefruit, so I top worked the tree, so it was only the Cocktail grapefruit branches.
You may have seen this photo before of the fruits on this tree, but I will post these again. The branches had so many fruits (30 on one large branch) but it did not break lucky for me. In the last few years, I ended up graft 8 other varieties on this tee.


 
This one is my mother tree. The Cocktail fruit on this tree is always large, about 1-1/2 lbs each. The skin/rind is not smooth, more textured, easy to peel skin off the flesh. Fruit is super juicy, others I give the fruit say it tastes great. I don't think it is the best tasting, but it is juicy and tastes good. I like the Valentine flavor more than the Cocktail grapefruit (personal preference). Another interesting point about this Cocktail grapefruit grafts is that this tree has huge thorns on the water shoot type of growth every year. Some of the thorns as the new growth hardens are 2-3" long, these are the longest thorns of all my citrus varieties.

It will be interesting to see how the ripe Cocktail fruits are on the Lane Late orange tree.

The source of this Cocktail grapefruit grafts is from my mother tree with the 30 fruits photo. The grafted Cocktail branches on this tree is vigorous, outgrew the orange branches 2:1, and it has thorns that are 1-2" long. The Lane Late orange tree has been in ground for over 5 years, and it was only 4-5 ft tall. My grafted Cocktail branches grew over 8 ft tall in 2 years and the tree looks overgrown. Once the fruits are done, I will cut back all the Cocktail branches down to 7 ft and keep it that size.

Khan, that's good to hear. I have a grafted Tropic Sun that is growing vigorously so I hope it set fruits next year. I also like the Gefner fruits that I have tasted. I have an atemoya someone gave me which tastes very good, don't know what variety it is.

Ok, the contest is over.

Yes, white sapote is one of the easiest to graft, just like avocado and loquats. The Younghan's Gold is a vigorous grower and has high fruit production in SoCal. You can check some of the old posts here by searching for Younghan's Gold. It is one of the best tasting yellow sapote.