For a belated #FruitFriday let's talk about Chachafruto (Erythrina edulis). A tropical tree in the bean family, Chachafruto produces huge quantities of pods filled with beans like giant lima beans. It's fast growing and known to grow well regardless of soil conditions, so it's being considered for restoration efforts.

The tree itself is ridiculously thorny: seedlings are tough to manage because of how the little thorns are everywhere on the plant.

Here's an update to the #Gardening #FruitFriday where I shared some fig grafts. After sitting in a jar of water for two weeks, the rootstocks started putting out roots and the scions started pushing new growth, so it was time to pot them up. Looking forward to six new Black Madeira fig trees.

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Surinam Cherry (Eugenia uniflora). A distant Guava relative, Surinam Cherries are a tasty treat about the size of a temperate Cherry but with a distinct range of flavors. As a mostly-wild species, there are only a few cultivars in circulation, but the best among them are significantly better than the best temperate Cherry, with a complex intensely sweet and tangy flavor. The fruits are very delicate and typically have little ridges on them, making them difficult to ship.

Surinam Cherries are native to South America and grow well in subtropical and tropical climates around the world. The plant grows as a bush or small tree. They are fast to produce fruit and can often fruit multiple times a year.

As an alternative to #FruitFriday, here's some unusual bench grafting I did.

These are grafts of the Black Madeira fig, which is highly prized but also slow growing and difficult to root. Here I'm grafting it onto fresh cuttings from a vigorous fig tree (that's growing wild on the side of a random building). The rootstock will root out in water over a couple of weeks while the graft will heal and start to grow.

For the graft I used both cleft and splice grafts, wrapped with parafilm and tied off with budding rubber.

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Tree Tomato (Solanum betaceum). These short-lived perennials are close relatives to common tomatoes, with fruit like medium-sized tomatoes. They can easily be started from seed and produce fruit within 6 months in the right climate.

They grow like small woody trees with enormous leaves that smell like popcorn when rubbed. In mild subtropical climates and the highland tropical climates of South America where they are native to, they can produce fruit year round for a number of years.

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Babaco (Vasconcella × heilbornii). Babaco produces huge quantities of large, juicy, and mild seedless papaya-like fruit that has a mild melon flavor and can be eaten whole, with the skin.

Babaco is thought to be a possibly-natural hybrid between tropical Papaya and Mountain Papaya. Unlike Papaya, Babaco grows well in mild subtropical areas such as coastal areas of California, and a very small Babaco tree can produce a huge amount of fruit. Unlike its likely parent species, it's virtually seedless and much more juicy, so it makes for a much easier eating experience.

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Rollinia or Biriba (Rollinia deliciosa). These are tropical trees related to Cherimoya, Guanabana, Sugar Apple, and Pawpaw, with a similar look but different taste. Rollinia fruit are large, sometimes the size of a soccer ball, and the pulp tastes like a creamy lemon pie. (But like other Annonaceae, the seeds are toxic and should be avoided while eating.)

Rollinia is native to the tropical Americas and grows well in frost-free regions around the world. They grow and fruit quickly from seed and can be grafted on some other Annonas. The trees do not like cold dry winds and can quickly defoliate under such conditions.

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Ice Cream Bean (Inga spp.). These are trees in the bean family that can grow extremely fast in the right conditions, fixing nitrogen just like other beans. They produce pods that vary in size from the size of your hand to the size of your arm, depending on the species. When ripe the pods drop and/or split open revealing fluffy, mildly sweet white pulp surrounding hard seeds. (The seeds of only a few Inga species can be cooked and eaten like beans.)

Ice Cream Beans are native to the tropical and subtropical Americas and grow well in a wide range of frost-free conditions elsewhere in the world. They are good pioneer tree species that can grow fast in poor soils after a fire (or, in places like Hawaii, directly in cracks of cooled lava). Their leaf drop is nitrogen rich thanks to their N-fixation ability, helping build soil around them.

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Jaboticabas (Plinia spp.). A distant Guava relative, Jaboticabas are a tasty and decorative group of trees that produce grape-like fruit directly off their trunks and branches, exhibiting dramatic cauliflory. Different species have different undertones, some with a bit of guava flavor, some with a bit of passion fruit flavor, and others with a flavor all their own.

Jaboticabas are largely native to Brazil and grow in subtropical and tropical forests and grow well in similar conditions all over the world. They're slow growing and tend to like low pH soils and rainwater, so they are sometimes tricky for folks to cultivate.

#FresaFriday ? #FruitFriday? Finally getting some decent #strawberries developing, note I had to rig up a bird-excluder netting device over my planter because they kept going after them as soon as they turned red.

#gardening #fruit #birds #photography

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Starfruit or Carambola (Averrhoa carambola). It's a small tree that produces huge amounts of refreshing, fragrant, and mildly sweet fruit with a flavor all its own (perhaps closest to the flavor of Asian Pears).

Starfruit are native to Southeast Asia and grow widely in the subtropics and tropics globally, but are not large-scale commercial fruit because they taste best when eaten soon after picking and are not easy to ship. (Here in California they grow well in Southern California and likely in frost-protected locations in the Bay Area.)

Starfruit has high levels of oxalic acid, so green parts of the fruit should not be eaten, and in general it's a fruit to be eaten in moderation.

For today's slightly-delayed #FruitFriday let's talk about Passion Fruits (Passiflora spp.), a genus of vines with elaborate flowers that produce fruit with amazing tropical flavors that are sweet, sour, fragrant, and floral. While there is one species, Passiflora edulis, that is widely known and grown around the world in tropical and subtropical areas, many of the others also produce excellent fruit.

Passion fruits are native to the Americas, ranging from the temperate Maypop (Passiflora incarnata) that grows in the forests of the US to the wholly-tropical Jamaican Passion fruit (Passiflora laurifolia) that has an intense sweet and floral flavor to Sweet Granadilla (Passiflora ligularis) and the Tacsonias (Passiflora antioquiensis and others) that are native to high elevation tropics in South America.

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Feijoa (Acca sellowiana), also known as Pineapple Guava. A distant relative of the common guava, Feijoa has a unique flavor like a mild sweet guava crossed with mint and wintergreen, with the texture of a pear.

Feijoa is native to Southeastern South America (Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina). It's a bushy, slow growing evergreen that's hardy below freezing and can tolerate long periods of drought. It grows well in many mild temperate and subtropical climates worldwide. Fruits are best when harvested off the ground when the tree drops them in the Fall. In some places it's planted as a landscaping bush and many people don't realize the fruits are edible.

If you've used our secure video conferencing service -- booth.video -- you might have noticed that it gave you random fruit names by default. You might not have heard of some of them, but they're all delicious.

So, let's start #FruitFriday with White Sapote (Casimiroa edulis). Despite being a citrus relative, White Sapote has a pear / peach / banana flavor with lemon cream overtones.

Productive and hardy, larger trees produce 2 tons of fruit per year. It's native to the highland tropics of central Mexico and grows well in California and similar climates. Unfortunately it's not widely known because the fruit is best when picked ripe or near ripe, and it bruises easily when shipped.

Apples aren't only beautiful as #fruit, also the #flower is gorgeous!

#FruitFriday

Sternrenette. Ein #Apfel wie ein Sternenhimmel.

#Apple #pomology #Pomologie #FruitFriday

There is a star in every apple #fruitfriday #fruit #apple #garden

@krassina I hope next week we can make #FruitFriday a thing, with all things #pomology 🍎