So recently I bought a Barbados cherry off the internet from some dude in Puerto Rico. As luck would have it, either some gremlin in the post office swapped my Barbados cherry for a coco plum, or the dude on the internet lied to me and stole my money. I suspect the post office.
As the unwilling brand new owner of a coco plum, I’m all questions.
Is this thing self fertile, or do I need another one?
Can it be container grown? The whole point of the Barbados cherry was that I could keep it in a container and get fruit with narry a worry.
Does it taste ok? I’m not expecting good, but if it’s at least nice enough that kids or adults might eat a few I’ll be satisfied and let the farm thing live.
You are just casually accusing the Post Office of committing a federal crime. It is illegal for the Post Office to open a package. Postal inspectors might or customs might but not the Post Office itself. It is America so I doubt it went through customs. I don’t know if you know how South America and the Caribbean is but those guys are not ones for integrity. Yeah Puerto Rico is America but I don’t think ethics is great anywhere around there. Even in America’s state system I bought some greek oregano from Home Depot and got a snake plant years ago. Home Depot had them resend it and I got Italian Oregano instead. I can’t answer of the coco plum.
It was clearly a sarcastic joke, because obviously the seller had either a mix-up or was intentionally selling the wrong thing.
As to the root question: they are OK tasting, kind of bland, big seed that clings to the flesh. I used to eat them off hedges in Miami as a kid, so they are good enough to choose to eat, but I wouldn’t have it taking up valuable indoor plant space if it were my choice to make. You often see them in large planters in outdoor restaurant or mall settings in Miami, so I assume they do fine in containers, but no real experience on that front. And no clue if they are self-fertile. Here’s the UF profile, which has some decent info: https://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/trees-and-shrubs/shrubs/cocoplum.html
Working at the Post Office you would be surprised on what people accuse us of. A package they picked or got delivered to the house and it went missing we clearly stole it according to the customer. Does not matter if it was months or weeks later and clearly it was us somehow. Items got mixed up clearly it was us mixing things up. Trying to import strong pot and it gets seized at customs what happened to my package. People are serious about all these things.
I think I’ll give it a shot. If it blooms a few times and doesn’t set fruit, I’ll give it away or toss it.
Seems like it should be easy in a container, might require root and vegetative pruning judging from those articles. Hopefully I’ve got one of the larger fruited ones. Thanks for the info!
Funny enough I was getting another Achachairu (likely from the same guy in PR) and tossed in a Icaco also. Whenever I’ve never heard of a fruit I always do some reading saw it was native to central/south Florida and apparently “the best cancer fighting fruit there is”. I likely wouldn’t have bought it on its own but figured the Humilis needed company on its trip, then typed it into the search bar and lo and behold you have one haha. So how is it doing?
They are a good beach hedge plant. Very pretty foliage. Similar to sea grapes, they are edible but I’ve actually never heard of anyone eatting them. In fact, in boy scouts we were told to not eat them because they were dreadful, but that was probably because they didn’t really want us eatting random fruits without supervision.
Coincidentally, my mother is in South Florida right now picking up cocoplums to put around the front of her house. We also have a flight of seedlings growing in the greenhouse. If anything they are very pretty and attract birds.
The seedlings have been in the greenhouse, but its an unsealed soft one, and the temps got down to 29, and they did fine (in greenhouse temps were probably around 40ish as a high estimate). And I’ve never heard of dieback from cold temps when I grew up down south, even in the couple of years we had frost. They are mostly a beach plant though, which always stays warmer.
I think the big issue would be prolonged cold and hard freezes. Its never truly cold here for more than a few nights at a time, and the soil never freezes. But quick spouts of cold should be fine.
Yeah even when we get a hard frost the ground never freezes here and I’m a mile(ish) from the ocean so the description (albeit I’m much further north) seemed like it could manage here with some care
My mother is back (with like 30 something coco plum seedling/volunteers) so I was able to ask someone with more experience with them. She says the purple ones taste like a very mild plum with a little grapish flavor, and the white ones taste similar but better. She likes them both a lot. She did also think it might struggle that far north, but if it gets big enough it should survive and just have some die back.
As someone who regularly ate both those things, seagrapes are by far the better tasting fruit, though with very little flesh. Both of them can be pretty astringent when underripe. Seagrapes taste best when basically overripe, turning to a thin coating of sweet mush around the huge seed. Cocoplums get even more bland and dry as they get overripe.
One old lady in Coconut Grove would make the most delicious seagrape jelly, but it must have taken so many fruit. I never asked for the recipe.
While working in SFL, I’ve been able to sample quite a few fruit (and collect a few 100 seeds). They are slightly astringent, especially when it hasn’t been raining and they aren’t super plump. They become trees if you don’t prune them, but they still fruit even as a hedge.
Purple ones (the most common) taste okay. The white ones are alot better, like loads better. The fruit sticks really really strongly to the seeds and is very hard to get off, making it hard to do stuff with. The white ones seem to grow closer to the ocean.
If you grow any of the white ones eventually I’d love to get a scion from you. Mine is small but I plan to plant it eventually and protect it and keep it small. Just up potted it into a 3 gallon and I was amazed at the plant being completely root bound as a 1 gallon tiny plant. Shocked at the vigor of the roots, but now I know I can’t plant it near the house. I’ll likely plant it in the corner of the greenhouse if you think 100+ temps won’t hurt it
I would be shocked if they suffer from heat. They are such a common landscaping plant in Miami along paved boardwalks and other heat island areas.
Yes, I usually would just pop it in my mouth and suck/chew it like a jawbreaker until it lost flavor.
The part about the white ones tasting better is interesting. I don’t know that I ever tried a white one, but I’ve found a few pretty good purple ones, but agree they tend to be a little astringent though not always. I’ll have to keep an eye out for white ones next time I’m down there.
The IFAS publication above says this, which is what I was going to guess based on memory:
Fruiting is abundant from late spring through summer. Immature and mature fruit are often found on the same fruiting cluster. Immature fruit are green and become purple, white, or white-blushed pink when mature. They do not ripen when picked prematurely. Mature fruit easily detach from the stem and fall below the plant or are removed by people or wildlife. They are soft and edible, slightly sweet and pleasant tasting, while others are somewhat insipid.
