Very very nice! They are loaded man! You could see the pollen on the leaves. Wonder if shaking the tree or having a gentle fan blowing would help at all? Thanks. J

I read somewhere (I think at Lycheesonline) that you can collect the pollen and mix it with water, then spray the females with it. They didn't give specifics on that method though. Another source says that wind pollination is negligible compared to what the insects do. Glad you like them!

Are you going to try anything with your Hak ip this year?

Yes...try to keep it alive!!!!!! I hope the plant recovers from the ship. They also had that nasty cold spell right before the order. Duh! When I start seeing new growth is when I will sigh with a little relief...just a little.

n-t-m, your blooms are a little ahead of mine, but I am happy to report 7 separate bloom spikes on my 'Sweetheart' lychee. I will follow your lead on pollination.

Interesting that I kept a min temp of about 58 in the GH but apparently that met the chill requirement.

@Stressbaby- Glad to hear that you'll be enjoying some lychees too this year. We do want to see pics of them as well. I made sure that my Emperor got a good number of hours at 40 degrees this past Fall, so that would probably explain the rush of flowers. As I understand it, each cultivar has different temp requirements for flowering though. For instance: No Mai Tsze, and Hanging Green (both mountain types...I think) have rarely produced any flowers/fruit in Hawaii, while Kaimaina does frequently. That is actually one of the main reasons I felt I could successfully grow lychees up north...I'm betting few lychees can resist the full 100-200 hours of 40 degree temps without flowering.

@OhioJay- You are definitely a braver man than I, ordering a lychee in the dead of winter. I imagine it'll be nice and comfy in that greenhouse of yours though. I say a prayer to the lychee gods for you, and hope the translation is right!

Well...like I mentioned in another thread, we were hitting in the upper 60's that week. It was a window of opportunity. Hopefully it will pan out.

Greetings,

I am inexperienced when it comes to tropical fruit and I'm visiting this forum to determine which type of plants would work best for me. In reading through many of the posts I'm astounded as I've not heard of half the plants some of you are growing.

I googled Lychee's as I had never heard of them before and still have a couple questions.

1. Is it necessary to pollinate the flowers in order to have fruit set?

2. Those of you that have tasted the fruit...what does it taste like? One reference I found online states the following:
"small commercial plantings by growers targeting high-end produce markets and gourmet restaurants"
This leads me to believe these plants are not very common or are difficult to grow on. Can anyone shed light on this?

Thank you.
Tj

how very exciting, your trees are beautiful. It will be interesting to watch the progression, thanks for posting.

SB, you are next.

-Ethan

TJ,
Welcome! In our northern zones, it will more than likely be necessary to hand pollinate. If you've followed N-T-M's posts above and his pics, you'll notice he's done a fantastic job at documenting the process for us. The tree is quite common in Florida, they get to grow all the cool stuff!

The taste? Depending upon the variety and ripeness... the taste is heavenly. One of my top fruit.

Us northern growers are a stubbern, hard-headed lot. We will gladly sacrifice living space to grow our plants!

TJ, great to see you made the jump from greenhouses! Uncommon, yes, in the north. Difficult to grow? Depends on who you ask. There are easier tropical fruits to grow. Oddly, the plant that grows well for one may inexplicably grow poorly for the next guy. That is one of the challenges.

Ethan, I told Jay that I was afraid to take pics, that it might jinx my crop, but what the heck, I will try to take some to post tomorrow. My flowers aren't open yet. If I get no fruit, I can blame you. ;-)

SB

Hello LadyLotus, and welcome,
As OhioJay mentioned, lychees do not self-pollinate as some fruit trees do. They need insect pollination, or to have it done by hand.

The taste, well, as Jay also put it, is wonderful to say the least. It is unique, highly fragrant, and very sweet. The absolute best way to enjoy them is straight off the tree. This is very problematic since they are indigenous to China, and they have an extremely short shelf life. The Chinese enjoy them the same way we enjoy cherries, or apples. The other aspect of their relative rarity is due to the fact that they produce fruit (depending on variety) erratically. Some cultivars will produce fruit every year, but others might only produce 1 out of every 4 years. There are a lot of variables with regard to lychee production. You may want to pick through the following sites, as they are a great source of info on lychees:

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/MG051
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/lychee.html
http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/fb/lychee/lychee.htm
http://www.lycheesonline.com
http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/lychee.html

I hope that fuels the fire for you.

If you get one TJ, be very careful with your potting mix, a lot of people have killed a lot of lychee trees trying to grow them. They're not exactly common in Florida, but in south Florida they're not too hard to find, including some commercial plantings. Outdoors they don't need manual pollination, but in northern climes, since they flower in winter, they'd have to be in a greenhouse which probably wouldn't have the insects to do the job. Haven't seen any flower buds yet on my 3 lychees or 6+ longans, but its still a tad early. As a note about cold sensitivity, a recent spell of 34F toasted some new longan growth on a young plant, but no mature growth on either species were bothered.

Gary

Well, it is not a great pic, but here is what I have:

Sweet! Plant is looking good.

Very nice...looks like they're starting to pop. It definitely won't take long until you're pollinating!

north tree- your emperor is the only lychee tree Ive ever seen which appears to not have any necrotic leaf tips. Mine certainly do, Stress Baby's appeared to ( no disrespect SB!), and even the trees I saw growing in the fruit and spice park in florida had necrotic leaf tips- and amazingly, you do not even have yours in a greenhouse. please explain the secret of the unbelievable health your trees are in.

also- if your trees are indoors, how were they in 40 degree weather- or were they outside at that that time.

finally- from where did you learn all the info re the different types of lychee flower and pollination stages- was it from one of the links you cited above?

Lycheeluva- I don't really have a concrete answer for this one, but I'll speculate on what it might be. When I mixed the soil for these trees, I tried to mimic their natural environment as much as possible, i.e. a very high organic content that is slightly acidic (the mix I wrote down in my previous thread.) If you look at the soil in Florida, it is typically higher in PH due to the calcerous bedrock. Also, I haven't fertilized these trees at all yet. A lot of people believe that if you fertilize too much, the trees will react poorly, and get burnt tips, etc. Personally, I think it is more of a PH issue. When you add chemical fertilizers to the soil, they are definitely messing with the PH. I did check the PH before (as I put it in a previous post), but I'm really not sure I can trust the 4-way analyzer that I used, so I can't give much insight there. I did recheck my plants since you posted this, and both my Hak ip, and Sweetheart have flawless top growth so far. The biggest problem I have with these trees is scales. I hate those little bastards, and I'm convinced they can turn invisible AND teleport!...but I digress. The greenhouse thing has more to do with light and temp requirements than anything else.

I specifically ordered the trees in Spring so they could get a full Summers worth of heat, humidity and light outside, on my deck, to acclimate well. When late September/early October rolled around, I brought them all in except the Emperor. I monitored the night temps and weather reports like a hawk to make sure it wasn't going to freeze, and I kept it out there as long as I could without damaging it. I did bring the tree in when the temps would dip too low, and finally prior to the first frost.

I thoroughly researched lychees using the sites listed above prior to buying any. The flower info was on the University of Florida website, and Lycheesonline site (look under "lychee info" and scroll down until you see it.) They are great sources of info, and should be examined by anyone interested in growing lychees. Another highly detailed site is:

http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/AC681E/ac681e00.htm#Contents

I hope that info helps you. How are your plants holding up? Any citrus flowers?

im actually away in playa del carmen mexico- im a little nervous that there may be a plant holocaust awating me on my return- hopefully they will all be ok.

my orange tree had about 250 blooms, however my blesed mother-in-law was babysitting my kids one day and in her wisdom she decided to shut the door the plants were in, thus allowing the heat from the super spectrum lighting to build-up and even though i discovered the closed door and opened it within 24-48 hours, it was too late- the room heated up like a sauna and all but 10 of the blossoms fell off and about 20% of the leaves died. oh well what is a mother-in-law for if not to make you scream out- "who the hell asked you to butt in"?

anyway- of those 10 blossoms, about 5 little fruit are left growing on the tree-

the tangerine tree which is growing in identical conditions, is a much slower grower both in terms of leaf and blossoms- so far about 5 blossoms-

as for the lychee tree- it is essentially unchanged. i bought it from jenes last april and within 3 days of arrival, the tempreture dropped to near freezing and it lost all its leaves- it took about month for it to sprout a new set of leaves and it has not really done anything since- that was in May of last year- i assume that it used most of its energy sprouing a new set of leaves. are there any signs i can look out for as to when it is about to start a new flush?

i will be buying a brewster, an emperor and a sweetheart in april and will def use the soil mix you suggested. i will also use that mix for my mauritius when i repot it in the spring. it is still in the original pot from jenes.

do you do anything to add humidty to your lychees?

It's really the southern part of the peninsula which has the calcareous limestone. I'm halfway up the state and have naturally acid soil, guessing around 5.5 or 6, right around what a lychee wants. My outer property gets some flooding, which a lychee doesn't mind much either. FAO also has a killer document on longans, my true love. Here is my sweetheart lychee last fall:

{{gwi:2100899}}

Gary

Thanks for the warm welcome guys.

OJ...we are hard headed and stubborn, yes I agree. We have to be. I know I am constantly pushing the zones and experimenting with something or another. ha ha

SB...Your Lychee looks as though it is going to begin flowering within the next couple weeks. How exciting. Thank you for suggesting this forum group! I have so enjoyed reading through all these posts.

NTM...I read through a lot of the information on the sites you provided. Thank you very much, I saved the links for further review, as I'm going to purchase one for Spring delivery.

I did read the other post about soils as someone posted it on the greenhouse forum. Very interesting reading. I wrote down that recipe and will try it this spring when I repot some of my plants.

The funny part is I was doing EVERYTHING wrong. I used peat, compost, perilite and sand in my mix. Most things survive the winter but once I begin using rain water again in the spring they thrive. I have the most luck when I water all my plants with rain water. It makes me wonder what the tap water is doing to us and if the water we use plays a big factor in the survival? Perhaps even more so than the soil.

For those of you who have greenhouses for your tropicals at what temperature do you keep your greenhouse in the winter?

Which Lychee seems to have the best tasting fruit? Mine will be living in a greenhouse, so I need something relatively small. Here are a few quotes I found when researching which Lychee would be the best purchase for me:

"A Brewster fruit is medium or large, sweet and juicy. At peak ripeness the Brewster is truly delicious and in taste tests against other varieties consistently outranks all of the others." The only complaint about the Brewster that I found was most of the sites indicate it has a rather large seed. But this one sounds promising.

"The flavor of Mauritius fruit is distinctly different and spicier than the Brewster and is quite delicious." The Mauritius fruit appears to have smaller seeds, smaller fruit and I think I've weeded this one out based on the reviews.

The Hak ip sounds interesting similar to the Brewster except smaller seeds and not quite as sweet.

"'Sweetheart' is hands down our finest lychee. It is a consistent producer of huge heart shaped fruit all having chicken tongue seeds."

"The Emperor is an unusually large variety of lychee. It is good tasting with a large seed. The skin (pericarp) of the fruit has very distinct bumps. This is a mountain variety, adapts well to container culture and tends to fruit consistently." "Taste is considered "Excellent." Height about 10 feet."

Although the Emperor seems to have the largest fruit according to my readings, it does not seem to have the great reviews as the Brewster and Sweetheart do...hmmm decisions...decisions.

It looks like the Brewster and Sweetheart have great reviews. I might have to get two now since I can't make up my mind. Ouch, I see the expense of them. Lordy! This IS going to be an expensive hobby. Are there others that set fruit consistently and have a great taste which might be better than the two I seem to have narrowed down to?

Thanks,
Tj

Tj, Brewster and Sweetheart are the two varieties I have. Can't comment on the taste [yet].

NTM, I have studied the flower types and I am ready to pollinate once these flowers open. According to at least once source, the time of day has something to do with when the flowers open. Have you found that to be the case?

A Brewster is often cheaper to buy the tree (compared to Sweetheart), very available, and the fruit still taste great. Hak Ip is great, a tad of water comes out when you open the skin. Hope to get some Sweetheart fruit this year, but we'll see.

Gary

@lycheeluva- You should see the terminal ends of the branches start to swell and grow little vegetative buds. They will look like tiny green fingers unfurling, and turning into the leaves. You'll know it when it happens. With regard to humidity, I don't do anything...it is actually quite humid in the Summer here, and in the Winter, lychees prefer a cool dry climate.

@dghays- Your sweetheart looks great! I love the volume on it. How old is that it?

@Ladylotus- I agree with using rainwater whenever I can. I feel that chlorinated water just does too much damage to the Mycorrhizae and beneficial bacteria, as well as, the tree itself.
As for the best type to grow, well, the premium types aren't available now in Florida (I contacted Pine Island last week about 'No Mai Tsze' and 'Hanging Green', and they said their trees were wiped out in the 2005 hurricane season.) I would probably recommend a sweetheart, brewster, or Hak ip. The only problem with them is that they grow big...a lot of pruning will be needed in a greenhouse, down the road.

@Stressbaby- I've noticed that the flowers do tend to open up more in the early-mid morning. I tended to pollinate around 11AM. Surprisingly, the flowers exposed to the least amount of natural sun (facing away from the window) actually opened up first, and the ones closest to the window opened up last. That might have had something to do with temp, but I can't be sure...the difference would have be marginal, except when the sun was shining. That's quite counter-intuitive though. Generally speaking, you shouldn't have a problem pollinating at any time of day, as long as, the pollen looks "dusty" and attaches to the brush, and the females are in the curly "y" shape. I was quite paranoid, and wanted to get as many females pollinated as possible (to counter any fruit drop), so I would try to pollinate the same flowers several times (different days) to be sure...usually until the stigma changed color. It was a long process once all of those females broke out!

NTM...looking back at your pics and comparing them with the flowers that are coming out on mine, mine look so small. I've only seen female flowers too. Doesn't look like anymore bloom spikes are going to appear either.

I need to set my lychee in front of the computer screen "looking" at these beautiful pictures. I think it is confused in what it should be doing.

thanks for all the great info and inspiration,
-Ethan

Jay- The flowers are very tiny...around 3/16ths of an inch in diameter in full bloom. I nearly went blind trying to find and pollinate all of the females in those large clusters...very painstaking. I did notice a lot of (potential) females on yours, but all bets are off until they bloom (they could be M2's incognito.) I doubt you'll get anymore bloom spikes this year...I believe they pop out all at once.

Ethan- You have my full permission to print out the pics and sit them next to your lychee...maybe it is lonely, or something. LOL Thanks for the kudos!

Well...at least we know it has the potential. Was hoping for at least one lonely male to show up with all of the females.

Now that I think about it more, they probably are M2's. My emperor was male dominated (M1) to be sure, but not every cultivar has the same proportion of males to females, and as I recall, Hak ips usually have fully formed seeds...an M2 trait since that pollen is more viable than the M1. Also, the M2's show up last...after females. Time will tell though.

I've had some male blooms finally show up. As of this time, it did not look like any pollen was available...nothing powdery. I'll check again in the morning. What is the primary difference between the m1 and m2? Any character or viewing differences? The females are pretty obvious.

Hi:
Very nice pictures.
Check this out. Very interesting.
http://www.lycheesonline.com/FlowerTypes.cfm

Jay- The M1's are much smaller, almost flat on top. The M2's look like a very tiny female (underdeveloped style/ovary), or a mix between the M1's and the females. The lycheesonline website shows good details on that as 'gradenfreak' noted above. As for the pollen, it takes a few days to mature, you'll see it when it's time to use the brush. You can also test it by, very gently, touching the stamen with your finger tip...you should see some pollen stick to your finger when it's ready.

I would urge you to use the M2 pollen whenever possible. Since my Emperor had mostly (~70%) M1's, I'm experiencing some fruit drop...~10-20%. It's tough to watch the fruits start to develop, then all of the sudden drop off, but that's one of the characteristics of M1 pollen (The other is aborted/chicken tongue seeds.) Good to hear they finally showed!

Not sure if my females will hang around that long. As for aborted/chicken tongue seeds...that is what we want for sure. Less seed, more eat.

I can't argue with that logic, but it's hard to see the buggers commit suicide. I guess we take the good with the bad. I suppose I needed them to thin a bit, since the Emperor isn't so big.
The females should stay viable long enough for you to pollinate them. Some of mine stayed available for about a week or two.

As an aside, I wonder how stressbaby's sweetheart is doing. Haven't heard from him in a while, and he should be very near or in the pollination phase.

I'm here, I'm following along...

My Sweetheart has a bunch of healthy looking bloom spikes, some perhaps 6" long. They look like they are just about to pop. I go out every morning and check on them, hoping for open flowers, but still all I have are little 1/16" buds.

I have studied the flower types, so I think I know what I'm looking for as far as male/female flowers go.

awesome pics treeman! I always liked this variety as a potted specimen.

OK, NTM or others, may I ask a question?

I had a single male (M1) open last week. Just one. Now it appears that I have dozens and dozens of F flowers opening on several panicles. I have nothing with which to pollinate them. Should I just hang on and hope for some F/M2 overlap before trying any pollination?

SB

Stressbaby- The M2's typically open up after the females do. They look a lot like the females in the early stages, with a shrunken ovary, then the stamen grow out long. I would assume the females will hold on long enough for the M2's to mature. I rushed the pollination on my emperor whenever I saw an open/mature female, so I can't really give you a (rock solid) half-life on the female lifespan. You should be fine though.
It's good to hear that they are opening up for you now.

All developing fruit dropped except for one. A new batch of females opened but no males.

I'm still experiencing some thinning on mine, but I'll still have quite a few to munch on.

Hi gang,

I went out this morning to find M2s open on my tree. This morning I couldn't make out any pollen on the brush, but this afternoon, I thought I could just barely see some. I could just barely make out a yellow tint to the tip of the brush, so I went ahead and tried pollinating anyway.

My next question is this: Is the pollen, when released, subtle or pretty obvious?

I could see it on the brush. My last, remaining fruit dropped off today. Ho hum.

SB- The pollen should be pretty obvious. The stamen, initially, look very plump, then they change to look dried out. When they look dried out/dusty, that is when the pollen is set to go. I had a ton of males all over, so the pollen was everywhere. The brush looked like it had yellow paint on it at times. If you gently flick the brush with your fingernail (in direct sunlight is best visibility) you'll see a small cloud of them. you could always pollinate the same flower several times like I did...just to be sure.

Jay- sorry to hear about that. At least you know it'll yield for you soon...after another growing season. My tree is still dropping fruit. I'm guessing the mortality ratio is around 75% right now. The fruits that are growing are plumping up nicely though.

Well, hopefully the rest of yours will stay put and develop fully... and hopefully SB gather enough fairy dust to get his going!

"I had a ton of males all over, so the pollen was everywhere. The brush looked like it had yellow paint on it at times."

I have no such findings. I guess I will just have to keep finigers crossed...

Keep us posted.

Interestingly, I found another grouping of flower buds starting to develop on my Emperor, along with some new vegetative growth. I always thought that flowering was a one-shot deal during the season, but there they are. Not sure what spurred it.

NT Man,

how many lychees do you have left on the tree. do you have any new pics. when r u planning on taking them back outdoors?

Lycheeluva- As of this morning, I've counted 42 lychees still remaining. I'm not anticipating on moving them outside until the middle of April. Still too many frigid nights, but I'm definitely hoping for a nice warm up soon. It's not worth hauling them all outside, then back in for the night...I'm too lazy for that. I'll see about taking some more pics this weekend.

42 lychees- thats great- have the drop-offs ended, or is it still ongoing?

For the most part they have slowed to stopping. I'd imagine it was an 85% mortality overall...probably more. Plus...I have those new flower buds popping now...so I may get more!