Tropical Fruit

[Epiphyte]

last november i visited costa rica for the 1st time. saw quite a few agaves but didn't take any pics of them. instead i took pics of tropical fruits and epiphytes.

how guilty should i feel about not taking any agave pics? i feel just a little guilty.

imagine if all of us met at the huntington to play tug of war. one side of the rope would be for agaves, the other side would be for aloes. which team would win? personally i'd pull for the aloes, and i'd pull pretty hard.

an alternative contest would involve donations. whichever team donated the most to this forum would win.

let me try to guess which team stan would be on... team aloe? and he'd be willing to donate $10?

a while back i google'd for some tropical fruit in california. one of the results was a thread in gardenweb that stan participated in. can't remember which fruit it was.

stan, come join me on the tropical fruit forum.

what if agaveville and the tropical fruit forum (tff) played tug of war for stan? which side would win?

honestly i kinda love the idea of poaching stan. there he is in his native habitat, just doing his thing, conserving water and what not. along i come. i'm too lazy and impatient to grow a stan from seed. so when i see such a mature stan right in front of me, my greed kicks in and i quickly dig him up by the roots. then i transplant him to a habitat where water conservation isn't a priority. but will he thrive? of course, he's easily the most adaptable variety.

one thing that's funny about the tff is that there's no subtropical category even though most of the members live in the subtropics. i suggested that donations be used to determine the creation and order of categories.

if the order of categories on agaveville's homepage was based on donations, then the more donations that the agave category received, the guiltier i would feel about not taking pics of agaves in costa rica.

and the more donations that the fruit category received, the guiltier that paul s would feel about not taking pics of them in the canaries?

is it self-evident that there actually are quite a few more or less tropical fruits that are native to relatively dry habitats? for example...

Berchemia discolor - drier, subtropical areas
Eugenia angustissima - ornamental and sweet, from dry habitat in Boliva, Brazil and Paraguay
Hancornia speciosa - drier habitats in Brazil
Pilosocereus gounellei - drier habitats in Brazil
Spondias tuberosa - drier habitats in Brazil

sadly i haven't tried any of these fruits, have you? but i did recently buy a few germinated seeds of eugenia angustissima from a local rare fruit collector. oh yeah, he did have a cactus in his front yard, i think he said it was a blueberry cactus? anyone ever try its fruit?

naturally it would be nice to know all the tasty fruits that can be grown alongside aloes and agaves.

[Stan]

TFF? No chances Carlos. They once told me that I could never grow Mangoes in the bay area and to give you idea how they are? Also told me Avocados don't grow here. I gave up when local bay area people wouldn't say a thing. Once when talking about the plants that have died on me over the many years and decades one of them told me "Gee,you must not be good for plants to have so many die"..!
Agave's I do have,but with the grandkids,Aloe's work out better and you can keep more of them. I miss not being able to keep Agave franzosinii or other big choice Agaves.
I go to garden boards to talk about what can be grown? I get told I can't do it. Well- theres the Panadanus,Mango,Pachypodium,Firest..i could go one. I don't even cheat..they are out there on their own you might say
To the left in the photo is a white sapote- bears sweet fruit all year more or less. Highly recommend.

[Paul S]

and the more donations that the fruit category received, the guiltier that paul s would feel about not taking pics of them in the canaries?

Here ya go As far as fruit is concerned in the Canary Islands, this is about it

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[Gee.S]

Next time just bring an extra roll of film, so you won't feel tortured about decisions, which don't need to be made.

[Stan]

Here's a tall avocado. Not even the largest in town I was told by a fellow Hayward gardener. About 900' tall

[Walas]

It looks a bit like the Apple logo

[plantguy]

So true!

[plantguy]

We should have a forum called: "What the power line people did to us"
Or maybe: "Topiary(s) courtesy of the power plant"

[plantguy]

@Epiphyte , any recommendations on hardy rare fruit? I'm talking about 8a hardy.

[Stan]

Paw Paw a native. I heard its very good.

[plantguy]

Yes, definitely thinking about that one.

[plantguy]

Just joined Epiphyte. Plantguy was taken so I'm plantperson there

[Stan]

Another are figs..with some protection. If you have hot and humid summers- then some banana and papaya can bear fruit in a good season. Possible.

[plantguy]

I have grown figs, and I know about those kinds of bananas, but do the papayas survive the winter?

[Stan]

No,you put them out at about a ~foot in spring if possible- and the mad dash to September for picking. You might ask the TFF what variety's can do that. They grow easy from seed- just lots of light. There are some Papayas that produce at 3'. Its getting the seed that's hard to find. Those you could grow in a half barrel.

[Epiphyte]

Next time just bring an extra roll of film, so you won't feel tortured about decisions, which don't need to be made.

roll of film? heh, then i'd be tortured trying to find a place that still develops film. do such places still exist? right now with digital i'm being tortured by google photos telling me that i'm running out of storage space.

i'm sure you've seen some habitat or tour videos on youtube where the person isn't paying attention to the "right" plants. this problem would be easily solved if we used donations to rank this forum's categories. then everybody would know how they should divide their limited time, space, money and attention between aloes and agaves.

TFF? No chances Carlos.

sadly i wasn't there to have your back, but now i am!

ever heard of yangmei (myrica rubra)? i recently participated in a yangmei group order organized by a guy in your area. just got the trees yesterday. they look kinda sad since they were shipped bare bare root, but hopefully some will survive. the biggest yangmei tree in california is probably this tree in the bay area.

on ebay there is currently a yangmei variety with a high bid of $3000.

your mango is looking massive! but are you going to move it away from the house?

Here ya go As far as fruit is concerned in the Canary Islands, this is about it

that's a lot of bananas! how do they taste? never see any cherimoyas? are you friends with lyonheart84 on youtube? how does his climate compare to yours?

ever make any crosses with echeveria rosea? i've made a couple crosses, neither turned out very exciting. the cross with gibbiflora leaned a lot towards gibbiflora, even though it was the father, but the flowers were yellow. i also crossed rosea with coccinea. rosea was the mother but a couple of the seedlings were fuzzy, which allowed me to guess the father. i managed to grow out one seedling and the plant seems a bit more robust than the father, and it's pretty green but the leaf tips can get some decent reddish blush. the flowers are ridiculous though, they are nearly green! it might be the very worst echeveria at catching the attention of hummingbirds.

i love rosea's form as an epiphyte, but its function leaves a lot to be desired. it kicked the bucket on my tree when drought forced me to reduce summer watering from 3x per week to 2x week. gibbiflora, on the other hand, didn't even skip a beat, but its form is meh. coccinea's form is better but i still prefer rosea's more horizontal or hanging form. haven't tried coccinea epiphytically but i'm sure it's a lot more drier growing than rosea.

i suppose it is pretty unreasonable to expect the best of both worlds on the 1st attempt.

right now i have a batch of epiphytic kalanchoe seedlings that i can't stop staring at. in this case i didn't try to rely entirely on hummingbirds. i got off my butt and used my tweezers to mix and match some of my favs. the seedlings have a fascinating continuum of leaf shapes...from round to scalloped. can't wait to see all their flowers. which ones will be the best at attracting hummingbirds?

the 1st place i stayed in costa rica, miravalles, was theoretically supposed to have a wide variety of hummingbirds. it's probably true, because i saw quite a few varieties of epiphytes that are pollinated by hummingbirds, but i was disappointed to only see two hummingbirds.

how sad are you that you didn't see any hummingbirds in the gran canaria? if they were introduced would they also create a big ecological nightmare like the opuntias and agaves? who is going around pollinating the opuntias and agaves anyways? i'm sure it isn't humans or hummingbirds. maybe it's bees and moths or bats? what are they even thinking? probably the same thing that i thought when i was pollinating the epiphytic kalanchoes... mmmm this is really good, more of this would make my life better.

being concerned about too many opuntias and agaves in the gran canaria is the same thing as being concerned about there being too few aeoniums there. personally i've never bought any opuntias or agaves (mangaves don't count!?), but i have bought plenty of aeoniums. sadly i waited way too long to harvest their seeds and i'm only seeing a few seedlings in the 36 pots that i recently sowed.

every organism endeavors to improve the balance according to their own benefit. humans, bees, ants and even slugs are unique among organisms in that we can communicate our benefit to each other. maybe slugs don't intentionally leave slime trials for other slugs to follow, but as a whole they benefit from having access to each other's benefit information. we, as plant growers, would certainly benefit if slugs couldn't read each other's slime trails.

therefore we should use our donations (to this forum) to learn each other's benefit functions and improve the balance accordingly. plus we won't have to worry as much that this forum will go extinct like xericworld did. it sucks losing access to all those threads. the other day i saw that the older leaves on my codonanthe were very plump and i thought about the xericworld thread where tim harvey said he was skeptical whether any gesneriad (?) leaf could truly be thick enough to be considered succulent, heh.

[plantguy]

@Epiphyte , do you know of any sources for epidendrum magnoliae? Thought you might being an epiphyte person and everything.

[Epiphyte]

@Epiphyte , do you know of any sources for epidendrum magnoliae? Thought you might being an epiphyte person and everything.

usually you can find them on ebay...

https://www.ebay.com/sch/159912/i.html? ... _PrefLoc=2
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R ... m&_sacat=0

there will be a lot more results when the weather warms up. andy's orchids usually has it...

https://beta.andysorchids.com/picturefr ... picid=2874

he has another orchid from japan, china and korea that is theoretically quite cold tolerant, cleisostoma (pelatantheria) scolopendrifolium...

https://beta.andysorchids.com/picturefr ... icid=05219

[Paul S]

Here ya go As far as fruit is concerned in the Canary Islands, this is about it

that's a lot of bananas! how do they taste? never see any cherimoyas? are you friends with lyonheart84 on youtube? how does his climate compare to yours?

ever make any crosses with echeveria rosea?

how sad are you that you didn't see any hummingbirds in the gran canaria?

being concerned about too many opuntias and agaves in the gran canaria is the same thing as being concerned about there being too few aeoniums there.

Canarian bananas are smaller, have a firmer texture and a more intense flavour than the ones we currently import from central America into the UK. Something to do with being grown on volcanic soil gives them extra nutrients, or something. It is their major export, I believe, and enormous tracts of land near the coast are given over to banana production, usually under vast 'tents' to keep the wind off. It is a strange thing to see as you approach in a plane, look out the window and see hectares of tents. Seems crazy to me that we don't import our bananas from the Canary Islands - half the air miles.

You see other fruits - pretty much anything that can be grown is grown, but never on the same scale as bananas.

Never heard of that fellow, where is he?

No, never made any crosses with E. rosea. Might be an idea when I get time. I have a form of E. rosea I collected in Mexico that is oxide red, rather than pink - quite striking grown in strong light.

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I'm guessing that the flowers aren't hummingbird-friendly out there as the two didn't evolve together like in the Americas?

There's certainly no shortage of aeoniums in the Canary Islands. Some species are rarer than others but some are extremely common, thousands of plants as far as you can see. Some of them would be more common, but for the agave and opuntia. In particular Opuntia ficus-barbarica favours the moister barrancos where you see a lot of aeonium, O. dillenii - the other opuntia seen there - is more xeric so not impacting so much on the aeonium habitat

[Stan]

The Mango is there for good- no room to move it,I wish I could sometimes- always a better spot taken up by something else,just too much work and you know its takes years for plants to re establish. btw,I have two Mango trees,the photo is Manila,and the other is Ataulfo grown from seed. Its much darker green foliage and new leaves are deep red. Colorful tree. It appears to be wanting to only be a shrub. Who knows how large eventually?10'? my guess. Good for never having to be pruned.
Right now Carlos I have them,White Sapote,Meyer dwarf Lemon,Santa Rosa plum and Dragon Fruit all squeezed on the same lot as C&S,Palms and jungle plants. I do a heck of alot of trimming and pruning. I wish I had both a greenhouse and a pond to add even more. One day.
One last- you got me on to planting on trees so I have that starting to thicken up.

[Jkwinston]

The last time I was in Tenerife many yeas ago, I came across a guy who sell plants both fruiits and succulents. Here are a few photos. Jkw

Tenerife

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Tenerife

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Tenerife

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Tenerife

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[Epiphyte]

stan doesn't grow enough tropical fruit

[Stan]

I have more than my share of types of tropical fruit but in the bay area's mild climate production is light. The big producers here are Avocados and Citrus. Still,tropical fruits are sweet and homegrown tasty.

[Stan]

Maybe Agaveville can add " Tropical Fruit" category. Draw in more contributors and plenty of cactus make tasty fruit or are good for eating.
I'm up to ten tries on posting this!

[Stan]

Just picked a colander full of Santa Rosa Plum..pure pleasure of one of the best tasting fruit out there in the world. Tropicals here are late season into October.