Hey Mango Kush, thanks for posting those great pics and the link. Those pics make my mouth water. The wai chi does look very similar to the Kaimana, I wonder how they compare in taste. I know that a lot of the lychee farmers in China plant mainly air layered trees but they also tend to plant a few trees from seed if they have a large plot of land. The Chinese government took over many of the local peoples lychee plots and only allowed each family to keep several trees. I would love to go back to China during Lychee season and taste and collect air layers from the Lychee trees scattered around the different regions. Some people are lucky enough to do this, and luckily they brought samples back decades ago, allowing us to be in the hobby now. I can't wait to see and taste the next new Lychee variety wether it is brought from overseas or a USDA selection. ***insanely insidious smirk, drool gliding down the side of my face***

Hello. It is possible to multi-graft Rambutan, but Longan and Lychee are difficult. There were some experiments conducted several years ago in India on grafting lychee trees, but it wholly proved to be unsuccessful. Some grafts too but they eventually succumbed to some sort of fungal or bacterial infection at the graft base. I would definitely try it though, you never know. I have never personally worked with grafting Lychee or Longan mainly because it is not necessary for me. Let us know how it goes. I think Longan would be easier to graft than Lychee. I do not think that grafting a dwarf onto a full growing tree would be a bad thing, but I do think it would be if it were the other way around. Brewster on Emperor for example would be a big mistake. I don't think the Emperor could handle being the rootstock and I definitely don't think if top-worked the Emp. could handle the weight and growth habits of the Brewster.

I'm not sure if Lychee can be grafted onto Longan but I do know that Lychee is pretty difficult to graft. I would wait untill late spring to attempt to graft/top work your tree. Be sure to graft directly above a leaf node. The USDA at Hilo Hawaii sent me an air layer of Kwa Luk (Hanging Green) Lychee and when I requested different varieties like No Mai Tsze, they said they could no longer send air layers but they could send you some free Scion Wood. They recommended I follow these instruction: http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/fb/lychee/lychee.htm Is there a reason you want to graft other varieties/species onto your established Longan? Many people don't know the trick of getting Longan to taste better. When the Longan are about pea size, you cut off half the panicle reducing the overall size of the panicle by 1/4 to 2/3. This will cause the remaining fruit to almost double in size and the fruit quality seems to improve considerably. Simon

Hey ohiojay, northe_tree_man and jsvand5, it is so great to chat with you guys/gals. So I guess I'm not the only one enfatuated with growing my own lychees. I really feel that because we get the cold weather here, you guys get even cooler weather, we can all grow the more difficult lychee varieties like Kwa Luk and No Mai Tsze. Well I can definitely get the No Mai Tsze lychee to fruit pretty well here because Exotica did it. For everyone that doesn't live in Florida or Hawaii, we may need to keep the humidity higher and protect the new growth from strong winds but it should be easier for all of us to reach the minimum chilling requirement. I don't know how crazy you all are about growing lychees but I'm super crazy. The water in California is super horrible. Its extremely hard water and lots of chlorine also so I buy Reverse Osmosis water. I'm a researcher at Synthetic Genomics, a super cool company that J. Craig Venter started. For all those people that are crazy over Lychees, I highly recommend you innoculate your soil with Mycorhizal (check spelling)fungi and also beneficial bacteria. You should keep your soil pH around 6 or so and incorporate lots of organic compost. I also innoculate my soil with earthworms and other types of worms. Innoculating your soil with these beneficial organisms drastically improves your lychee plants ability to absorb nutrients which may help your plant flower and fruit. The city water is horrible because the chlorine in the water can kill or inhibit the beneficial fungi and bacteria. Hey ntm, did you use the Emperors M1 pollen to polinate your Sweetheart? I heard that the Sweethearts are supposed to have Chicken tongue seeds also so I would expect them to have lots of M1 pollen. It would be so cool if you polinated half your Sweethearts with Emperor polen and the other half with Sweetheart pollen. How many Sweetheart baby lychees do you have so far? I know lots of them may shed off but you seem to always have a good crop of Emperors. Were you ever able to find a Kwa Luk? jsvand5, that would be so cool if you did the cross and got some good results but you may have to wait 8-20 years for the fruit and you may have to plant many many trees. Lychee trees are so beautiful anyways and I'm going to try to cross my Sweetheart with my No Mai Tsze. I should be able to harvest when I retire :) Growing seedlings is so cool because the tree will have a tap root and you can create a new variety that surpasses anything out there. The seedling will likely be more adapted to the conditions in which it was grown too. My plants are still small and I can't wait to get a house so I can finally plant them into the ground. I suck with computers but I will try to take some pics of my plants and also the Lychee trees at Exotica. The Lychee's at Exotica are just starting to bloom now.