For a belated #FruitFriday let's talk about Chachafruto (Erythrina edulis). A tropical tree in the bean family, Chachafruto produces huge quantities of pods filled with beans like giant lima beans. It's fast growing and known to grow well regardless of soil conditions, so it's being considered for restoration efforts. (It's a nitrogen fixer like most in the bean family.)

The tree itself is ridiculously thorny: seedlings are tough to manage because of how the little thorns are everywhere on the plant.

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Surinam Cherry (Eugenia uniflora). A distant Guava relative, Surinam Cherries are a tasty treat about the size of a temperate Cherry but with a distinct range of flavors. As a mostly-wild species, there are only a few cultivars in circulation, but the best among them are significantly better than the best temperate Cherry, with a complex intensely sweet and tangy flavor. The fruits are very delicate and typically have little ridges on them, making them difficult to ship.

Surinam Cherries are native to South America and grow well in subtropical and tropical climates around the world. The plant grows as a bush or small tree. They are fast to produce fruit and can often fruit multiple times a year.

As an alternative to #FruitFriday, here's some unusual bench grafting I did.

These are grafts of the Black Madeira fig, which is highly prized but also slow growing and difficult to root. Here I'm grafting it onto fresh cuttings from a vigorous fig tree (that's growing wild on the side of a random building). The rootstock will root out in water over a couple of weeks while the graft will heal and start to grow.

For the grafts I used both cleft and splice grafts, wrapped with parafilm and tied off with budding rubber. #Gardening

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus). Jackfruit is the largest fruit in the world, some weighing as much as an fully grown adult person, and it can be tasty and nutritious, with sweet pulp/flesh (or savory when underripe) and seeds that can be eaten when cooked.

Jackfruit is native to Southern India and now is grown across the tropics globally and increasingly can be grown in subtropical regions. It is one of the most productive trees by yield. Like Jaboticaba, which we talked about a few weeks back, Jackfruit is typically cauliflorous, with the giant fruits growing straight from the trunk. (This probably helps the tree support the massive fruits.)

Jackfruit is a close relative of Breadfruit and Breadnut, which are both productive and nutritious tropical fruit trees, and a distant relative of Fig and Mulberry.

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Tree Tomato (Solanum betaceum). These short-lived perennials are close relatives to common tomatoes, with fruit like medium-sized tomatoes. They can easily be started from seed and produce fruit within 6 months in the right climate.

They grow like small woody trees with enormous leaves that smell like popcorn when rubbed. In mild subtropical climates and the highland tropical climates of South America where they are native to, they can produce fruit year round for a number of years.

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Babaco (Vasconcella × heilbornii). Babaco produces huge quantities of large, juicy, and mild seedless papaya-like fruit that has a mild melon flavor and can be eaten whole, with the skin.

Babaco is thought to be a possibly-natural hybrid between tropical Papaya and Mountain Papaya. Unlike Papaya, Babaco grows well in mild subtropical areas such as coastal areas of California, and a very small Babaco tree can produce a huge amount of fruit. Unlike its likely parent species, it's virtually seedless and much more juicy, so it makes for a much easier eating experience.

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Rollinia or Biriba (Rollinia deliciosa). These are tropical trees related to Cherimoya, Guanabana, Sugar Apple, and Pawpaw, with a similar look but different taste. Rollinia fruit are large, sometimes the size of a soccer ball, and the pulp tastes like a creamy lemon pie. (But like other Annonaceae, the seeds are toxic and should be avoided while eating.)

Rollinia is native to the tropical Americas and grows well in frost-free regions around the world. They grow and fruit quickly from seed and can be grafted on some other Annonas. The trees do not like cold dry winds and can quickly defoliate under such conditions.

For today's #FruitFriday let's talk about Ice Cream Bean (Inga spp.). These are trees in the bean family that can grow extremely fast in the right conditions, fixing nitrogen just like other beans. They produce pods that vary in size from the size of your hand to the size of your arm, depending on the species. When ripe the pods drop and/or split open revealing fluffy, mildly sweet white pulp surrounding hard seeds. (The seeds of only a few Inga species can be cooked and eaten like beans.)

Ice Cream Beans are native to the tropical and subtropical Americas and grow well in a wide range of frost-free conditions elsewhere in the world. They are good pioneer tree species that can grow fast in poor soils after a fire (or, in places like Hawaii, directly in cracks of cooled lava). Their leaf drop is nitrogen rich thanks to their N-fixation ability, helping build soil around them.