Yes i do! 
The true Psidium Longipetiolatum is really great! Sweet with lemony taste, big size and the best keeping qualities among araças.
Curious if anyone else on here has had success growing these?
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The only person in this thread who hasn’t updated in awhile on the status of this species is @SnacksFromPlants, but I think they are a little colder than I am, so wouldn’t be surprised if it’s died for them.
I noticed that Wanderlust doesn’t seem to carry it anymore, so I’m guessing they decided it’s not hardy enough for here.
Here are a couple photos from earlier today of my two sad little trees, the second one still has green bark but no buds grew this year:
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Sadly, I’d expect we’re at least a hundred years’ of breeding away from having any kind of zone 8 hardy psidium. Zone 9 folks get to have all the fun…
I have some psidium cattleyanum var littore seedlings, and will probably be getting some p. longipetiolatum in the near future, maybe p. robustum if I can find a good source. I have no expectation of being able to keep them outside unprotected, but, like my satsumas, so long as they can get through winter with a bit of protection, I’m happy. Since they’re virtually pest-free and super easy to care for during the growing season, I don’t mind having to put in some effort helping them out during the winter.
Maybe sometime down the road I’ll play around with crossing those species. Who knows, perhaps some F2s will be more hardy.
I have tried growing P Longipetiolatum, P Cattleianum, P Robustum and a couple of other Psidiums in zone 8a/8b for several years now.
Compared to Feijoa, Guabiju, cold hardy citrus and even Uvaia they can give you a good abundant harvest now and again, but all in all are quite difficult to grow into fruiting, I have found.
The plants survive pretty good usually and that is why they are deems hardy to -6 C. But the flowering and fruiting is much more delicate than other semi-exotic or sub tropical species. The fruits will ripen very late here (after Christmas until March) and will shrivel up and turn brown at any kind of frost. The plant will survive, but you won’t get any harvest. Also, after a winter with temperatures around -5 C the plants will survive, but have so much damage that they will not fruit the following summer. All in all a hardy plant, but don’t wait for it to fruit… and ripen….
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Good to know.
We’ll see how mine behave. I don’t have much tolerance for plants that need lots of effort but don’t return much, so if I have trouble getting them to fruit their future won’t be so bright. That said, I suspect I get far more summer heat than you do. Maybe that’ll help, maybe not.
I guess I’ll find out.
Mine is still in a pot. Been to scared to put it out. Might give it a spot on the greenhouse in ground. We’ll see. It did defoliate but then re-leafed so I was happy about that.
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I am shocked this doesn’t show clearer signs of freeze damage, but I’m assuming it’ll just be delayed. This is earlier today, after about 60 hours below freezing and more than 48 hours below 25°F, with a low of 14.7°F:
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It did die back almost to ground level, but is already starting a spring flush, a little ahead of feijoa in terms of when it started budding out:
I’m starting to believe this thing might actually do fine here if we can string together a couple winters without a freeze in the teens (which in recent decades has actually been common). Would love to see what a 2"+ trunk looked like after a freeze like that one.
And to be clear, this was the only severe freeze event we had over the winter, but it was a pretty severe freeze:
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We’ve had a few warmer, sunny days and this one is really starting to take off. After surviving that freeze without protection, I’m going to be kind to this little fella next winter and try to help it through any bad freezes so it can get a little bigger.
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I cleaned up the dead wood a little on the trunk so you can see the years of winter dieback more clearly.
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Well, I had some seeds, but after several months there no germination. I’ll leave them be, I don’t need those pots, but I’m not expecting much.
I got some cuttings a while back, which were nicely sized but unfortunately got pretty cooked in the mail. Whatever life they had left in them got snuffed out when my humidity dome ran out of water and dried up pretty bad without my noticing.
So now I’m just gonna go with old reliable: random plants off Etsy.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before for sale as plants, so I guess the timing was fortuitous. I now have two well sized if rather pot bound guavas. As best I can tell, the leaves are right, with a few of them having that tell tale heart shape.
Finally.
I happened to pick a really succulent psidium cattleianum var whatchamacallit earlier today that was fantastic. Sweet, sharp, juicy, fruity and a little minty around the skin, just a great little guava. I figure it’ll be a few years before longipetiolatum is big enough to flower, but once it does, I’m gonna cross them. I think I’ll baby both of these plants, especially in winter, grow one out without interference to get to flowing asap, and the other I’ll grow out but also use for cuttings. I’ll try rooting some back up plants, and if that goes well I’ll put a few back up plants outdoors in ground by the house for winter trialing, ideally with and without protection. I’ll also try grafting to my already fruiting guavas to try and induce flowing that way.
Should be fun!
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My thoughts are, it’s unlikely that Psidium longipetiolatum has sufficient hardiness in my zone. My guess it it’ll survive my winters either undamaged or somewhat damaged, or at least only actually die in the rare single-digit freezes we get every now and then. But I don’t think it has much chance of coming through winter without a fair amount of dieback most years. Which is probably going to be an issue.
Everything I’ve heard about this one is it takes a while to get fruiting. It needs to be pretty big, and it does not fruit in the year following a lot of winter damage. At least from what I’ve been able to gather. And while I’ve heard the fruit is good, I suspect my current guavas are probably a tad better.
But what really sets Psidium cattleyanum var littorale apart is how precocious and fast fruiting it is. My fastest of the lemon guavas bloomed and set fruit a year from seed, and the others weren’t far behind. In warm weather, I reckon they mature and ripen in something like three to five months (I haven’t kept as careful track of that as I should have). I’m testing one plant this winter to see how they recover from severe cold. I’m hoping it takes a good bit of dieback, but retains most of its stems. If a young lemon guava can bounce back, flower, and ripen fruit after winter defoliation and stem dieback, I’ll be satisfied. That’ll mean that the genetics I want are there.
If the cross can even happen, we’ll be in business. The F1 of mountain cherry guava x lemon guava probably won’t be all that interesting. Maybe all the cold hardiness genes are dominant, but I doubt it. And regardless, I’ll likely keep the F1 generation indoors during winter to speed up the maturation. Once I get F2s, I’ll be able to start screening for cold hardiness and fruiting after hard winters. Since both parents are pretty good to very good tasting, I’m not too concerned about having to select for fruit quality, which should make the task easier. Absolute best case scenario, I end up in the F2 or F3 generation with something that is as hardy as pure mountain cherry guava, but that, if it dies back even completely to the roots, will resprout and fruit again in the same year like a Mt. Etna fig.
I think another route to the same end might be to use Psidium salutare var mucronatum. It is similarly hardy to lemon guava, but it is a very diminutive, low growing subshrub that fruits when only a food or even a few inches tall. I think it is also rhizomatic, but I could be mistaken there. It is apparently very slow growing, but it certainly has the genes for fruiting even when really small. The flavor is supposed to be more citrusy than a lot of other “araza” guavas, but I suspect that mostly means very sour. And the fruit are tiny and extremely seedy, so I doubt this one makes for good eating. That would add to the things I’d need to select for if crossed (if it can even cross) with mountain cherry guava. It’s also even harder to get ahold of than mountain cherry guava, and fiendishly difficult to find compared to lemon guava, so I’ll pass for now.
Anyway, we’ll see what comes of this. Probably nothing, and it’ll all fail with nothing being hardy or precocious or fertile, but it’s worth a shot. Goodness knows we need more low maintenance fruits around here.
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Yeah they look right to me, too.
I’ve been debating digging mine up and keeping it in a pot for a few years, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort.
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In my experience - I have been growing Psidium Longipetiolatum for 6 years now - it is not any hardier than Cattley Guava. So I am not convinced that it is a good source for cold hardiness. It is a thousand times more vigorous though. It comes back from the roots after freezes, but then takes a couple of years with winter protection in order to flower.
The other problem is that it is such a vigorous plant that it is hard to keep it in a pot - it needs a huge and heavy pot in order to grow big enough to fruit and that is difficult to move to a protected spot in winter, while almost impossible to keep watered in summer.
I cannot grow it in the ground here, - I tried but it dies back to the ground each winter - so compared to Cattley guava it turns out to be a less suited plant for zone pushing, because Vattley guava remains small and fruits in pots that are easier to move around, don’t need that much space in my unheated greenhouse in winter and they are easier to keep well watered in summer.
Another difficult thing about all Araças in my climate is that while the plants are hardy, the fruits cannot take any hint of frost. And they need a long time to ripen here, so even when I let them ripen in my unheated greenhouse, one year in two the dips below freezing that occur in there ruin all the fruit in December, just before it is ripe.
I tried to cross pollinate the two species for several years, without any fruit set, so I also suspect, but I am not sure of course, that they may be of different ploidity.
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Yes, the leaves look right to me. And they get this rippled look when they have been grown indoors. When grown outside the leaves get flatter and more leathery. I’ll see if I can upload a picture later
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Are you sure you have the right one? On my worst winter she took -6,5c with no problem, so my experience is totally oposed. My tree is big, i already have her for 10 years or more… she grown from Helton seeds.
The leaves don’t look right for me… i will post mine soon…
@a_Vivaldi i didn’t have many seeds grow either, but I have at least one, when I think about it I’ll post it but it hasn’t even grown it’s first true leaves yet I think. That’s from May also I believe. I’ll plant it directly in ground in spring especially after the comments to its vigor.
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