100 Year Old Mango Tree - How often does fruit bloom?

9 years ago

Hi Folks,
First time poster here. We moved into a house four years ago with a huge mango tree. We were told it was about 100 years old from a tree service. Maybe a Carrie mango?

The last three years it has always grown mangos. Last year it must have dropped close to 500 mangos. They were yummy and a pain to clean up.

This year maybe five mangos have dropped. It did flower in the spring. Can't see to many on the tree. The leaves are dropping like crazy. New leaves are growing. I have to rake twice week for the last month. Yuck.

Pics are included. The pic with the red leaves was just taken. The other is just to show her glory.

So my question is do mango trees have fruit cycles? Or is the end near for our old friend?

Thanks,

Mango Dave

This post was edited by mangodave on Fri, Jul 11, 14 at 18:27

Comments (11)

mangodave
Original Author
9 years ago
Here's a pic from a few years ago.not sure why I can't post more then 1 pic at a time.
sweetmonkeycheese
9 years ago
Holy man, I had no idea mango trees could be so big! I am no help to you, but I hope your old gal is just a lil under the weather and is back to her glory days soon!
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The Carabao mango is sour when it's green, but when it's ripe it's sweet, it should be big in flesh. It should melt on the tongue and be almost fiberless. We use the unripe to sour "sinigang" soup. The carabao mango was renamed the "Philippine Super Mango" because of it's superiority among Mangoes. Because of this reason, the marketing from "Manila Mangoes" a name that comes from the Manila galleons that first brought Mangoes to Mexico, have been known to switch to calling their Mangoes "Philippine Mangoes" to compete (Check the shipping box so you know where it's produed!). So now what you need to know is whether or not your "Philippine Mango" tree was grown from an actual Carabao seed or from the Mexican grown variety which has over time become more fibrous than the it's ancestor in the PI and the sweetness of the PSM is more, I want to say, pure. In a way it's less cloying as if the sweetness comes in just the right intervals and not assaultingly. I know this sounds crazy but it's the national fruit of the PI for a reason. I've seen them in mail-order fruit magazines in Japan going for almost $70 for 6(probably hand-picked blemish free specimens). Meanwhile they're but a dollar for a bag of them in the PI. Anyway, the reasons that I babbled on about probably explain the conflict. The cultivar "Pico" is also from the Philippines but the Carabao is the "Philippine Super Mango" for marketing reasons. Basically, KEEP IT! Oh and thanks for the cuttings, I've got the pots all ready.
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katkin_gw
9 years ago
Yes, some mango trees get huge. We try to keep ours pruned shorter. We don't get so many fruit that way that we can't use. BTW, you can pick them when they are showing some blush and ripen them in the house. You don't have to wait until they fall.
The tree looks healthy and it's got new growth. There were some other posts that this year wasn't the best for mangoes. Check them out. :o)
lazy_gardens
9 years ago
In commercial orchards they are usually replaced at about 40 years, so you have an OLD one.

They can be cyclical. Again, in an orchard they aren't all in a low cycle at once so it's not an issue unless the weather was bad.
mangodave
Original Author
9 years ago
Thanks for all the replies. We will cross our fingers and hope for better next year.
puglvr1
9 years ago
Maybe a nice hard pruning job will kick it into gear...but it will take at least 2-3 years after a VERY hard prune to start fruiting again...if it were my tree I would cut appx. half of the height...but that's just me. Shorter fruit trees are a lot easier to manage...either way Good luck!! Its probably just an off year...some fruit trees do this...
ladywingr
9 years ago
In our neighborhood (an old mango grove from the 30's), none of the old trees had good fruit. One very young tree has some, one old one had tons of fruit that dropped off small and rotten, but most didn't set fruit at all, including our old reliable 35 year old tree. I'm leaning toward whitefly causing the problem, but I have nothing scientific to back that up. Whitefly has shown up big time here in the past couple years.
whgille
9 years ago
I just came back from the mango festival at the Fairchild gardens and they had a mango clinic there to ask questions. One of the volunteers told me that if I want the trees to fruit, keep it at a small size, he said not tall like a palm. I saw an incredible amount of mangoes there. Great mango season!

Silvia
mangodave
Original Author
9 years ago
Wow, more good replies. It could be white fly. Our neighbor across the street had them in the spring on their Christmas palms. They wiped them out and I don't see any on our palms. Mango tree is to tall for me to see anything up close. We live in the St. Pete area so the white flys are jus arriving here.

Our mangos tasted good but I'm no mango expert; never had one before. They could be rotten compared to younger fruit for all I know.

Thanks again for the feedback.
nighthawk0911
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
It's not a Carrie. Carrie is a semi-dwarf tree. Most of the "Old" mango trees are usually Haden's or Haden seedlings as the number of varieties available in the US were fairly was limited at the time and Haden was the dominant variety. Haden is also a large tree as well.

Mango trees can live for 300 years, but in most sub-tropical climates in the USA a 50 year freeze will knock a lot of them out. Mangos depending on variety are inconsistent bearers and weather plays a large part from year to year. Mango flowers are damaged or killed below 40 degrees.
dirtygardener73
7 years ago
I've seen some ancient mangos in SW Florida. It's amazing that they are such a long-lived tree.

100 Year Old Mango Tree - How often does fruit bloom?

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100 Year Old Mango Tree - How often does fruit bloom?

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