I thought it would be fun if people would provide pictures of some of the interesting tropical fruits they are growing.
I'll start with three very different examples. What they have in common is that all are cool growers, originally from high elevations in the Andes. I don't have a greenhouse, and although it's frost free here (the last 4 winters) it's too cold to grow lowland tropicals, for the most part. Not all of the pictures are of my plants, but I am growing all three of these right now.
I'll include a Passiflora, although I also want to start a separate thread for Passifloras.
First, Mountain Papaya, Vasconcellea pubescens x monoica. This is a hybrid made by Martin Grantham at SF State University. The picture is of a plant in a private garden in San Francisco. I have a rooted cutting of this plant which is about to go (tomorrow) into heavy bloom. It had a couple flowers when new last year, but did not make fruit. The plant is female, parthenocarpic, but also makes a few seeds (apomixis?). It gets hundreds of fruits, the size of apricots. The fruit I tasted was pretty bland, but I think people normally eat Vasconcellea fruits either cooked, often as a vegetable, or preserved with sugar and/or spices.
I got 5 seeds out of the fruit I tasted, and from that one seedling. It lives with a friend. Seedlings are also expected to have the properties of the parent.
Passiflora 'Mission Dolores'. P. parritae x antioquiensis. Carlos Rendon's hybrid. This is self-fertile, but not necessarily self-pollinating. The juice of the ripe fruit tastes to me somewhat like an orange without the tartness. The flowers are up to 7 inches in diameter, on peduncles that can get up to 2 feet long.
The plant growing in the trees at the SF Botanical Garden (they are having a sale Friday (members) and Saturday (public), by the way--their big annual sale).
A piece of vine from the original plant, in the Misison Dolores neighborhood of San Francisco:
Fruits hanging in the garden of a friend of the hybridizer, in SF:
An opened fruit, from the hybridizer's plant (we drank the juice):
Finally, yet another Andean species, Fuchsia boliviana Alba.
The plant blooms successively on inflorescences that lengthen for weeks. The fruit tastes a bit like kiwi fruit, in my opinion. The squirrels also like the fruit, and they shredded the inflorescence/infructescence on one of my plants.
Anyone else grow anything interesting?
I'll start with three very different examples. What they have in common is that all are cool growers, originally from high elevations in the Andes. I don't have a greenhouse, and although it's frost free here (the last 4 winters) it's too cold to grow lowland tropicals, for the most part. Not all of the pictures are of my plants, but I am growing all three of these right now.
I'll include a Passiflora, although I also want to start a separate thread for Passifloras.
First, Mountain Papaya, Vasconcellea pubescens x monoica. This is a hybrid made by Martin Grantham at SF State University. The picture is of a plant in a private garden in San Francisco. I have a rooted cutting of this plant which is about to go (tomorrow) into heavy bloom. It had a couple flowers when new last year, but did not make fruit. The plant is female, parthenocarpic, but also makes a few seeds (apomixis?). It gets hundreds of fruits, the size of apricots. The fruit I tasted was pretty bland, but I think people normally eat Vasconcellea fruits either cooked, often as a vegetable, or preserved with sugar and/or spices.
I got 5 seeds out of the fruit I tasted, and from that one seedling. It lives with a friend. Seedlings are also expected to have the properties of the parent.
Passiflora 'Mission Dolores'. P. parritae x antioquiensis. Carlos Rendon's hybrid. This is self-fertile, but not necessarily self-pollinating. The juice of the ripe fruit tastes to me somewhat like an orange without the tartness. The flowers are up to 7 inches in diameter, on peduncles that can get up to 2 feet long.
The plant growing in the trees at the SF Botanical Garden (they are having a sale Friday (members) and Saturday (public), by the way--their big annual sale).
A piece of vine from the original plant, in the Misison Dolores neighborhood of San Francisco:
Fruits hanging in the garden of a friend of the hybridizer, in SF:
An opened fruit, from the hybridizer's plant (we drank the juice):
Finally, yet another Andean species, Fuchsia boliviana Alba.
The plant blooms successively on inflorescences that lengthen for weeks. The fruit tastes a bit like kiwi fruit, in my opinion. The squirrels also like the fruit, and they shredded the inflorescence/infructescence on one of my plants.
Anyone else grow anything interesting?