Sunday, April 29, 2007

Summary - last week of April

The cashew flowers have been blooming for about two weeks now. In this photo, you can make out several of the cashews and what will be the "apple", just above the familiar "C" shaped nut.





Avocado flowers are also out. Like with the cashews, some of the early flowers have been pollinated and are developing into fruit.



OK, so I forgot to rotate them (actually, I hoped that blogger would read the rotation in the exif data). Here, you can see (if you turn your head) my huge longan tree in blossom. It just started this week.


One more head turned is this one which shows the surinam cherries.


First signs of canistel flowers.



Key lime fruits forming - you can still see the stamin of the flowers, and other flowers that just opened in the background. This tree is on its third or fourth flowering since January.



A fruit I need to post an entry on is Spondias purpurea, a.k.a. Red mombin (jocote, in Costa Rica). It is flowering now, and since this was a mild winter in florida, there are also fruit developing from a few months back alongside new ones.



Imbe, Garcinia livingstonei, is beginning to fruit. It also is blossoming. More about this East African tree later...





The annona squamosa, sugar apple, flowers are blooming, Here you can see both male and female stages of the flower. I'll leave it up to you to guess which is which.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Inga Edulis - Ice Cream Bean


This week, the Inga started to bloom.
The Inga is native to the Amazon, and grows quite nicely in Florida. However, our sandy soil (combined with the Inga's shallow root system) causes lots of problems. These trees have suffered in almost every hurricane. In fact, the tree you are looking at has been cut to the roots several times after it has fallen in the 80+ mph winds of hurricane seasons.

The Inga makes pods, which inside, have green seeds covered with a white, fluffy pulp. (that's why some folks call Inga the cotton candy fruit).

The best and most in depth info on Inga, and on its utilization, can be found in two excellent books by T. D. Pennington: The Genus Inga - Botany ( ISBN 1 900347 12 1) and The Genius Inga - Utilization (ISBN 1 900347 58 X)

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Cashew (Anacardium occidentale)

Sorry it has been quite some time since I posted. I hope you have been checking and will be glad to read that the cashew flowers are in bloom. They are quite beautiful, and their smell reminds me a bit of cinnamon.

Cashews are native to the northeast coast of Brazil, and are mostly known for their nuts -which grows externally in its own kidney-shaped hard shell at the end of a pseudo-fruit. Illike the "apple" myself, but you better make sure it is ripe or you'll get a sour surprise :-(

More on the cashew as it matures.

thanks, and please check back. I'll try my best to update more regularly.