pitangatuba (eugenia selloi/eugenia neonitida) also known as Brazilian star cherry
i had planted one bush earlier this spring and planted another recently, both mature and of fruiting age.
the fruit smells delicious - kinda like passionfruit/guava/mango and it has a sour but tropical taste, soft and kinda mushy/juicy with one relatively large seed. these were kinda small, they fell off the bush when green so they didn’t reach their full size so i let them ripen on the kitchen counter. when too ripe (mushy) they taste bad.
i was hand pollinating flowers on one bush and only got one or two to fruit (birds had gotten to my first fruit) so i bought another bush so i can cross pollinate the two, luckily the second bush came with lots of flowers and perhaps was around other flowering pitangatubas and that had some small fruit forming. i don’t know if self-incompatibility is common with pitangatubas but i’ve read some just don’t produce much fruit. they keep flowering all summer so hopefully i will have more fruit.
I bought a couple from Flying Fox Fruits.They grew okay for awhile,then one died.The other produced a fruit,which fell off,a little prematurely,when touched.The taste was pleasant.
That one eventually didn’t live long.They were kept in small pots and put inside a tent in my house,with a grow lamp,during the winter.Maybe they needed a warmer,humid environment.
Sounds like I’m headed down the same path. I had two small plants. After about a year one started declining, losing leaves, and had several rounds of dieback before losing all its leaves and above ground growth for no apparent reason. When I pulled it some time later up to reuse the pot the roots seemed to still be alive, but at that point I didn’t care to save it. My other one is still alive, and flushing pretty nicely now that it’s hot out. If it floats and fruits, cool, if not, I’ll protect it through one of two more winters and then probably give it away.
i wish it had more sweetness to balance the sour flavor. last year got a small pitangatuba from Flying Fox Fruits (it was actually 2 seedlings), replanted in a bigger pot and kept in one of my greenhouses in the winter, the deep freezes this past winter killed one but the other one defoliated a bit but came back and is growing well now that it’s hot.
i had a large, very old one (in the ground) last year that i didn’t protect well during the winter, we hit a low of around 20F in january and that killed the pitangatuba but i think they can handle mid 20s but they defoliate, below freezing the leaves start getting chilling injury. other than the cold damaging them, i really haven’t had problems growing these bushes.
Yeah, they’re definitely in the “requires extensive protection or bringing indoors” for me. Below 20 F is guaranteed here every year. I bought them on a whim, so I feel ok letting go of them on a whim.
my friend and i both ate a miracle berry before eating a pitangatuba and we both really enjoyed the experience. the pitangatuba tasted as amazing as it smells. it was actually pretty intense.
flying fox fruit (fff) has a couple crosses between pitangatuba and pitomba that aren’t as sour as pitangatuba. i’m sure there are other species that pitangatuba could be and should be crossed with.
i tried miracle berry, it doesn’t work on me, i tried eating it before i ate acerola cherries and it didn’t work, i still tasted the sour vegetable flavor of acerola. the miracle berry itself though is good.
interesting. the 1st time my friend tried miracle berry she said it didn’t work. i suspected that she had wolfed it down. so when she was about to try it the second time, right before eating a pitangatuba, i told her to eat the miracle berry as slowly and meticulously as possible, including the skin, and to suck all the flesh off the seed. this time she said the miracle berry worked.
pitombatuba - that’s so cool! i have never tried pitomba but i have two seedling pitomba trees, not sure when they start producing but i will have to plant them near my pitangatuba trees (once they’re more mature) and see if they will do the same.
