the tropical fruit forum doesn't have a function to upload pics. just how useful is this function anyways? the correct answer can only be determined by each forum member using their donations (to the forum) to communicate their own personal perception of this function's usefulness. in the meantime, i'll use this entry to post pics for use on the forum.
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For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game—none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band's, or even your species' might be owed to a restless few—drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.
Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: "I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas . . ." - Carl Sagan
atf loves to eat forbidden fruit. every unknown fruit in the wild is essentially forbidden. even in cultivation.
this past summer my friend and i happened to spot a huge capulin cherry in a random front yard filled with fruit hanging over a sidewalk. right next to it was this...
we didn't recognize it, but we were tempted to try it. neither of us gave in to the temptation.
throughout human history, if nobody ever gave in to the temptation to taste forbidden fruit, then we probably wouldn't be the dominant primate.
if atf had been with me in the jungle then i'm sure he would have tasted the syngonium fruit. he would have put the video on youtube and then we'd be marginally less ignorant about the fruit on our planet.
ideally we'd be extremely grateful for the enrichment and enlightenment, but most likely we'd take it for granted. no statue for atf. no gold medal. no hall of fame.
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when i visited costa rica last year, specifically miravalles volcano in guanacaste province, one of the biggest fruit mysteries involved a syngonium...
the plant itself didn't particularly catch my attention since i've been growing a similar noid syngonium outdoors for years. my plant has never bloomed but it has for the friend who shared it with me. his blooms a lot each year but fruit never develops, not sure why. maybe it's because a suitable pollinator is missing... or perhaps the plant needs cross-pollination.
here's a pic of the syngonium fruit that i found on the jungle floor...
it was the size of a baseball and smelled very tantalizing, like banana and pineapple, similar to monstera deliciosa, which isn't surprising since they are both in the same family. but unlike the monstera fruit, the syngonium fruit seemed to be ripe all at once, so there probably wasn't an issue with calcium oxalate crystals. even though the seeds were a lot larger there appeared to be a decent amount of flesh. unfortunately the fruit looked like it had been on the ground for a while, so i was too nervous to try it. i wish that "all the fruit" had been with me!
i read about syngonium being invasive in florida, so i figured that somebody there must have tried the fruit, but evidently it just spreads vegetatively. it's identified as syngonium podophyllum, which has a wide distribution from mexico to bolivia so it might be the same as the one i saw in costa rica.
anyone ever tried syngonium fruit? most of the google results aren't very helpful. there's a pic of the fruit on the toptropical website but i didn't find a description. you'd figure if they had tasted the fruit then they would have mentioned it.
the chances seem slim that something so widely grown has delicious fruit, but nobody knows it. then again i doubt that back in the day everybody who grew monstera deliciosa knew that its fruit was delicious. because they didn't know its scientific name?
coincidentally, when i was in costa rica... a sloth, two toucans, and numerous other birds pooped on me, and when i returned home i scraped the poop into some pots and a few different plants popped up in them, including some that look like the same syngonium. if you're skeptical then i guess you haven't seen the credible movie "castaway on the moon".
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Can you grow Soursop/Guanabana in California
I don't think you'll find a huge variation in temperature tolerance.
back in feb i visited a friend's local nursery and took a pic of half his soursop seedlings...
the vast majority were deciduous or dead. when did the 1st seedling lose its leaves? january? december? when would the last seedling have lost its leaves? march? april?
I think Seanny is onto something with the inter stock graft being a great idea.
i'm a bit surprised that cherilata is suitable to graft soursop onto. i searched and searched for a phylogenetic tree of annona and this was the best i could find... Relationship between fruit phenotypes and domestication in hexaploid populations of biribá ( Annona mucosa ) in Brazilian Amazonia...
seems like rollinia deliciosa is closer to soursop than cherimoya and reticulata.
A. Montana pollen must not be compatible, likely previously tried and documented by Har on the forum somewhere.
i think that i read in some thread that har said that montana is a good rootstock for rollinia. it would be surprising if montana pollen wasn't compatible with soursop.
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list of fruit trees in los angeles parks
ever heard burdekin plum (pleiogynium timoriense)? i'd never heard of it until the other day when i randomly found it at the la arboretum...
coincidentally it had quite a few fruits on it. the ones on the tree were all hard so i summoned my inner "all the fruit" and tried a ripe one from the ground that was intact. here's what it looked like after a few bites...
tasted kinda like a disappointing plum. similar texture and flavor, but not much sweetness.
it's definitely not something i'd suggest going out of your way to try, but if you were planning on going to the arboretum anyways, the tree is across the orchid greenhouse, past the grove of bottle palms and to the right. you'll see a curtain of leaves all around except for on the other side.
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Passiflora phoenicea x caerulea?
last august a friend shared a fruit from his passiflora phoenicea ruby glow which he pollinated with caerulea. the fruit was relatively large and enjoyable. i liked it a lot better than the few edulis that i've tried. they are a bit too sour but great on top of vanilla ice cream.
i was extra motivated to sow the ruby glow seeds because i was very curious what the hybrid would be like. passiflora caerulea comes up on its own here so often that when i was growing up that i assumed it was a native. it's actually from south america. sadly the fruit is virtually flavorless.
on 11 august i sowed around a dozen ruby glow seeds. only 2 seeds germinated and shortly afterwards, 1 of the seedlings was entirely eaten by a slug.
i should mention that the seedlings were in different pots in different locations. if they had been in the same pot in the wrong location, then the slug would have eaten both seedlings. this is why the #1 plant rule is to hedge your bets... don't keep all your eggs in 1 basket. since i do sow lots of seeds, in order to avoid running out of space, i put different seeds in the same pot. for example, i put the passionfruit seeds in 11 different pots with the following seeds...
Aeonium Mardi Gras
Aloe bakeri hybrids
Anthurium coriaceum
Calamansi variegated
Dragon fruit sweet red
Epiphyllum red long big fruit
Eulophia speciosa
Hoya papaschonii
Ficus NOID fuzzy juicy
Ficus Panache
Ficus religiosa
Gasteria NOID blooming w aloes
Guava banana
Guava strawberry
Kalanchoe Lynn’s variegated
Mangave Freckles and Speckles
Miracle fruit
Spanish lime
everything basically boils down to a matter of usefulness. the other day i randomly stumbled on a pile of discarded citrus...
if you had encountered this pile, what would you have done? how many fruits would you have tried to salvage? i grabbed 4 or 5.
one of the larger ones, somewhere in size between a grapefruit and a pomelo, tasted quite good, maybe like limeade, but it sure had a lot of seeds...
64 seeds! what is the most seeds you've ever found in a single citrus fruit?
for me personally the abundance of seeds was definitely not a deal breaker. in fact, i deeply appreciate all the potential for an even better citrus.
another seedy citrus that comes to mind is the cocktail grapefruit aka mandelo. it's sweet and super juicy, i like it a lot more than the average grapefruit, but not sure if i like it more than limeade.
the mandelo was created by the university of riverside in 1966, but it was never officially named or released...it somehow "escaped". how, exactly, did it escape?
how many people were responsible for deciding whether the mandelo was worthy of being officially released? maybe a committee of 5 citrus experts judged the mandelo's usefulness?
on the one hand, we all know and understand that one person's trash is another person's treasure. but on the other hand, virtually everyone has no problem with the preponderance of gatekeepers and judges deciding for everyone whether something is trash or treasure. the judges always mess up, but their mistakes are rarely caught. if the mandelo hadn't escaped then we wouldn't have known of its existence. when the erroneous judges are caught then the seriously silly solution is to replace them with "better" judges.
the true solution is for each and every one of ucr's new citrus to be judged by donations. let each and every person in the world use their own money to help determine a fruit's usefulness. which is more useful, cold tolerance or hlb tolerance? the better that ucr was at balancing these two goals, the more donations it would receive.
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haha words are hard. i was going to be 100% unlazy and show you from scratch, but then i decided to be 10% unlazy and show you some closer pics. here are a couple mango seedlings in separate pots...
left is champagne, right is palmer. both are growing, and i plan to let them continue growing at least until i can try the fruit.
here are a couple myricas in the same pot...
left is myrica californica, right is myrica cerifera. now i just need to add myrica rubra. once i add rubra i'm not sure if i'd remove the tops of californica or cerifera, even though neither is edible, given that both might be able to pollinate rubra.
on youtube i've watched a ton of grafting videos involving seedlings, and not once have any of the grafters mentioned the possibility that a seedling being used as a rootstock might have produced better fruit than the scion. it's a fact though that any given superior variety only exists because it wasn't used as a rootstock.
a seedling is used as a rootstock for a superior variety, which only exists because it wasn't used as a rootstock.
anyways, i grafted the myricas and mangos while they were potted, which was tricky. i think it's easier to do the grafting bareroot.
i don't know what the optimal length graft is. it seems like a longer graft makes it easier for the plants to communicate and exchange resources.
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Selling: Plinia otto anderson and Phithantha blanca and others plants
got the luc's scions today! i am very happy with them, thanks a ton!! most went onto achachas, hope they take.
seems like one of the garcinia luc's scions is starting to push...
it's on top of an achacha in a 3 gallon pot. i guess it's possible, and perhaps likely given the time frame, that the luc's scion is using its own energy to start growing. then again, i'm getting the feeling that these garcinias in the americas are all pretty closely related, so considerable compatibility wouldn't be very surprising.
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Can loquat be bred for temperate climate like pomegranates?
not too long ago, inspired by this thread, i grafted a loquat (eriobotrya japonica) onto an indian hawthorn (rhaphiolepis indica)...
i also grafted a loquat onto a noid hawthorn from italy (crataegus sp)...
out of all the possible rootstocks for loquats, which would confer the greatest cold tolerance?
which combinations of intergeneric loquat crosses would eventually produce the most cold tolerance and the best tasting fruit?
there are a few crosses between eriobotrya deflexa and rhaphiolepis indica, such as coppertone, but i don't know of any intergeneric crosses with eriobotrya japonica (not that i've conducted a decent search). here's a useful pdf with info and pics of coppertone.
it's strange to imagine that there aren't any hybrids between eriobotrya japonica and rhaphiolepis indica, given 1. their compatibility 2. how common they are in california and 3. how often loquats are grown from seed. oh, i just looked up their blooming periods and evidently they don't overlap. that would explain the absence of natural cross-pollination, hah.
as sc4001992 mentioned above, piera loquat can bloom all year long, which is obviously a useful trait for trying to make intergeneric crosses.
can you imagine a cross between loquat and quince? it might be possible given that quince can be used as a rootstock for loquat.
i'm guessing that much faster progress can be made with loquat hybridization, in terms of cold tolerance and fruit quality, than with breeding and selecting solely within the species.
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