It’s June 15th and we are all aware it’s lychee season! Yesterday at Walmart I picked up 5 pounds of lychee fruit for $3 per pound. First to market fruits are never the best because people rush to pick them to get them to market first. Anyone else eating lychee?
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Nice fresh booking lychees
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Nice haul, Clark. Lychee and mangosteen are the two tropical fruits that I wish I could grow. Maybe you could plant out the seeds and make the dream a reality 
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How do you eat those @clarkinks ? Does the taste resemble anything familiar? I’ve never seen those in the stores up here in the middle of nowhere 
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@Amy
They are somewhat citrus like in flavor but different. I feel very good when I eat lychee. They do not have that acid juice like the orange , lemon, lime, kumquat, star fruit etc…the juice is pleasant and refreshing. Highly recommend you read more in this thread Steady trickle of exotic fruits in the stores. The skins are somewhat paper/leather like and they tear easily to get the fruit inside. Once I tear a small hole in the skin juice starts to spill out and I squeeze the fruit and juice into my mouth and remove the seed. If you have eaten slip skin grapes think of them as having a similar skin but larger and slightly thicker.
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Be forewarned, if you like firm, crunchy texture fruit, lychee is not for you. Some people do not like its soft, juicy ( some say mushy) texture. Unlike rambutans or longans which are very sweet, lychees has sweetness and a bit tang to it. That’s why it is atractive to me and many.
Ripe chylees should have more red than green on the skin but with them being imported, they need to be picked sooner like other fruit that need to travel a long distance.
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I have never heard of Lychee. By how many clark bought I will have to look for it. It must be special to him.
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@SMC_zone6,
I would love to grow lychee and mangosteen. Unless someone could hybridize cold tolerant lychees, I will keep my enthusiasm in check 
There are dwarf mangoes but I don’t know about dwarf lychee cultivars.
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Be careful eating unripe Lychee.
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I love them and find their taste is a bit floral.
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Good to know. Where I come from, Thailand, lychee is considered a seasonal and expensive fruit. There is no chance any of us could have access to unripe lychees.
A lychee season there is in a cool (never cold) season Nov- Feb.
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Mrs. G.,
That!s a good description, floral. It does have such scent to it. I have eaten many, many tropical fruit, lychees and mangosteens are my favorites.
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One of my many favorite tropical fruits😭
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totally agree. The juice is an exquisitely sweet and flavorful decoction of rose petals. A refreshing treat especially in our hot and bone-dry summers.
There isn’t much variation among longan cultivars, but some popular rambutan cultivars have a really nice tang which goes well with the sweetness. Some obscure rambutans have intense sours, like super sour jelly ranchers. Rambutan also come in pink, red/pink rind with green or yellow hair, and even maroon, orange, or yellow all over.
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what might be dangerous to those with low bmi’s may be medicinal to those with high bmi’s.
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Re. Rambutans, those sold in markets are the “popular” ones. I used to eat the pink one with pink hair. Some of them were “sour” and cling stone. Those would not make a cut to the consumers’ market today. I’ve not seen yellow hair or orange hair ones.
Red with green hair is the most popular ones and is free stone. Rambutans are such as extraordinary-looking fruit. I’ve been to such orchards on the eastern seaboard. Seeing large trees with red hairy fruit hanging all over the trees was a sight to see.
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the yellow and orange rambutan are yummy, but for some reason not as productive as the red ones, so not as readily available.
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haha, actually used lychee/longan pits for slingshot when i was a kid The almost-perfect round contour and density of pits are ideal for the job. Going back to topic, lychees sold in usa should get cheaper with time, as have noticed some stores just recently started selling mexican lychees(and rambutan), so cuts the shipping cost from southeast asia. Mexican mangoes were expensive ~10 years ago, but our southern neighbor’s trees have gotten bigger and more productive after all those years, so now can often get them for a quarter each, or even offered at 20 cents apiece! Lychee and rambutan trees are at least as long-lived as mango trees, but have longer gestation periods(than mangoes) to full production, which perhaps explains the relative scarcity of mexican lychees.
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