LA means Los Angeles or Louisiana? If it's the city of the Angels, well, mangos should do well. This should not be a problem. Just wear gloves. If, however you are allergic to the fruit, then you should not consider the tree.

I can't wait for our 2 year old grafted Manila Mango to produce. Maybe next year.

Subtropix - Thanks! That's just the sort of feedback I was hoping for. I believe poison oak is also in the same family. At least it has the same scientific name (Toxicodendron).

The Japanese lacquer tree is also related. I'm terrified by the idea of wood deliberately treated with urushiol oil.

Suzi - Los Angeles, yes. North county, though, so it gets a bit colder. Or at least it used to. This past winter it never dropped below 35F, but a few winters ago we had a freeze that killed my landlady's unprotected citrus trees back to their rootstock. I think I could protect it if a freeze was coming, though. I'm not allergic to the fruit - I love them. At least the smaller yellow ones with the softer flesh. I don't like the more fibrous red ones as much. I'm not as much worried about my own reaction (I would know to wear gloves if I were going to be pruning it back a lot) but I would not want guests to brush up against it and get a bad rash. If it's in a low enough concentration that you have to get a lot of the sap on you to get the rash, then I'm not so concerned.

The foliage is used as a floss in some countries. So,I would say most people have no allergy's to them.

They are fun to grow and an ability to fruit at such a small size is great. No waiting for it to be 20'. They can start at 3'

Stanofh - I didn't know either of those things! Totally cool! Fruiting at 3'? Wow...

To have a small tree get fruit it needs to be grafted. The graft is as old as the tree it came from. That's how you get small potted trees being sold in nurseries with flowers and/or fruit already on them.

I thought the age and size of the rootstock also affect things to some degree? I was under the impression that you couldn't graft (e.g.) a 15 year old mulberry branch to a 1 year old rootstock and immediately expect to get fruit the next year...

I don't know about mulberries but with mangos it does work well. Grafts come from an 8+ year or so old tree that's already in fruiting mode. The rootstock only needs to be large enough to support the graft, one year probably being enough. I've seen multiple grafts put on the stumps of older trees, but often that's to get a number of varieties onto the one tree.

wow ok! So if I understand what you're saying, that means if you have a grafted mango, if the graft came from a mature tree, you can expect fruit the season after it's grafted?

Basically, the following fruiting season it should produce flowers. You need to watch that the plant can support any fruit that it carries. Fruit can get big enough to break it. Some people pick the flowers off to let the plant concentrate on growth for the first couple of years.

Cool! Thanks for the great info :)