I wanted to know what your top 5 tropical fruit/exotic fruit would be. This would help me greatly on trying to decide what fruits to focus on. All I know atm, is I want at least a mango and papaya.

1. Mango
2. Mamey Sapote
3. Lychee
4. Sapodilla
5. Black Sapote

1. Lychee
2. Mango (love the 'smell' of its foliage too)
3. Coconut
4. Rhambutan
5. Sugar cane (with the right cultivar, a cup of sugarcane juice in the summer is wonderful.)

also Rambutan, sapodilla, a sweet starfruit.

1. atemoya
2. sugar apple
3. sapodilla
4. lychee (no fruit yet)
5. dragon fruit (so far only flowers)

I also love mango but no room for it now. I love rambutan and mangosteen but these are very hard to grow in the US...unless you have a greenhouse.

mango
sugar apple (a. squamosa)
mangosteen
chupa chupa (matissia cordata)
guaba (inga edulis)

i also LOVE avocado, longan, white zapote, cherimoya, quenepa, mamey, coconut...

I love Lychee's and growing your own is waaaay better than getting the store bought varieties. I'm not sure which state you live in but I would try to grow exotics that you can't necessarily find in stores or that are normally too expensive to buy.

Mangoes are the next tropical fruit I am going to attempt and I want to grow them because once again the store bought varieties are so horrible. Once in a while when the markets do sell good quality mangoes, I buy boxes of them and the ripened fruit are intoxicating to smell. I love cutting into a fully ripened mango and seeing all the juice squirt everywhere, boy, I'm really making myself crave mangoes right now.

As with all the fruit I listed above, the home grown blows the store bought fruit out of the water. Cherimoyas are great because they taste so good, if you've had a fully matured and properly ripened one. Cherimoyas are also very expensive so its one of the best fruits to grow if you love them and don't want to spend a fortune to support your habit. Most varieties will require hand pollinating but this is a good thing because it will get you into your garden and out of your house.

Dragonfruit are also great because you can't find the good varieties in the stores. Try American Beauty or Halley's Comet. They taste much better than the regular white varieties that they sell at the stores. Dragonfruit are also very high in fiber and the red varieties have lycopene. I'm definitely a carnivore and some dragonfruit after a large steak is good for your digestive system. Dragonfruit is also very cooling when you eat it, don't know how to explain it but its kind of like eating cucumber.

I guess Asian Pears aren't tropical but they can be considered exotic. I just love the crunchy juicy sweet flesh of asian pears. I had a 5 in 1 multigraft asian pear and it gave me the best tasting asian pears I have ever eaten. The home grown ones, at least in my case were much smaller than the huge store bought ones but they mine had very intense pear flavor and were much sweeter than the store bought ones.

I noticed that you listed yourself as a zone 9 and Papayas may be difficult to grow in your zone. You may also consider growing white sapote, Longan or Blood oranges. Once you decide what type of trees you want to plant you will have to make the even hard choice of which cultivar to select. Good luck and let us know how it goes!

For me there is a huge drop off after lychee's and Mangoes.

Still waiting to try a few others. I am hoping to add Jackfruit and cherimoya to the list this summer.

Mango
Lychee
Mangosteen
Rambutan

Atemoya (and I would presume Cherimoya would be in the list as well if I ever could get a good one, since this is where Atemoya gets its consistancy and flavor)

Pineapple, home grown and perfectly ripe may creep into to that top tier on a good day.

I haven't found any mangosteens for sale down here in the past. I continue to look. Everything else, including rambutan, you can find, but so far, no mangosteen. I was able to try some from Bill Whitman's tree, the year before he died. I am now hoping for some from Gerry in NY this summer. He said he would send or bring some down. I have had some from China Town in NY couple of summers ago. Then last year, in Canada, I was able to get more from Asian markets/stands in various fruit markets in Vancouver.

Harry

nullzero,
My favourite are (in no particular order),
1)Malay apple
2)Indian Jujube
3)Mango
4)Pulasan (number 1)
5)Mangosteen
6)Lychee

Wish I would have known that day before yesterday. I was in WPB and would have definitely checked it out. If you happen to go by there and they have some mangosteen....let me know, I would definitely want some. Thanks.

BTW, do you know where their mangosteen came from? Also, is it radiated fruit?

Harry

apparently they have shark fin as well, lol.

lychee
mangosteen
mango
jaboticaba
passion fruit

it seems pretty clear that among GW members, lychees and mangoes are the clear winners.

Harry- its a done deal- if they have mangosteen this year, and there is no reason why they shouldnt, I will be bringing you several bags.

Very sad to leave out jaboticaba (also great jam) and lychee.

1. Mango
2. Banana
3. Lychee
4. Pineapple
5. Longan

The thing is though they are similar to Lychees they taste more like grapes....kind of one dimensional flavor. But I have only had the Khoala variety, I know there are others.

Lodoicea maldivica Coco De Mar

"Densuke" black Watermelon

Levins Black Pomegranate (not sure if the pic is accurate)

Musa Kluay Namwah Nuan Jan (they are the white ones)

Garcinia mangostana

Durio Dulcis

pedalai

Aishwarya mango

Tampoi

Bo