Yeah, the articles I’ve seen suggest cattleianum can have several different ploidy levels and is kind of a big mess. Longipetiolatum is 8n. Did you have the yellow or red cattleianum?
Interesting observations about hardiness and vigor.
Aha, I found a good breakdown of the ploidy.
I just now realized this whole time I’ve been thinking var littorale was the yellow one. It’s not. The yellow one is var lucidum.
:facepalm emoji:
Do yours sometimes have those heart shaped leaves?
Mine has really dark leaves but I do not think it was grown outdoors in full sun. We’ll see what kind of leaves these have next summer when they’re growing outside.
Yes always… i already post about it… i will post some old pics.
That’s good. Mine have a few, and I don’t think any other guava species does.
But the fruits are really good with a lemony flavor and its the best araça variety on storing time.
I think the reason is yours is outdoors in full sun. Like @Solko said, they look very different when they are grown indoors. My leaves looked exactly like @a_Vivaldi’s when I got the plants originally (top of this thread) but then they look more like yours after they’ve been growing outdoors in full sun.
It was a great thing if you could grow yours and mine on same conditions…
Hi Luis, I think I have received the same seeds as you did 8 or 10 years ago. I got mine from either Miguel, or Nélio from Madeira or you yourself, since the three of you are my only contacts in Europe for exotic seeds from Brazil.
I think you get to the heart of the zone pushing dilemma by giving us your experiences with the same tree, but in diffenerent climates/
To me it seems (now - after 8 years) that the difference between Psidium Cattleyanum and Longipetiolanum is that one is much more vigorous (Longipet), but that in my context the other is much more productive (Cattley)
I will explain myself a bit further, I do think that Longipet is much more vigorous and because of that it will do better in a climate that is on the edge of what it likes
Cattley on the other hand is less vigorous, but it will fruit faster and take up less space when you grow it is the same way.
When grown in the open ground there seems to be a counter-intuitive sequence: in warm climates Cattleianum seems to give the best guavas. In marginal warm climates (like Portugal) Longipet seems to do a bit better and have an edge, especially when planted outside in the field.
And then in. even colder climates cattley guavas become more productive again because they are easier to protect, move, when grown in pots, and to harvest before winter.
At least that is my experience. I am pretty sure that I am growing the same type of plants as you do - and I will post some pictures, but to me - I have had -6C to -7C but for a whole week every night last November, not just in one occasion, both Cattley and Longipet died back to the ground. But I can imagine that once planted in ground both would survive one night of these temperatures once their root system would be well established.
Here are some pictures of my plants:
First my Longipet (left) versus my Cattley in the right
Than a close up of the leaves of the Longipet:
Then a close up in comparison: Longipet on the left and Cattley on the right
And here is a Longipet that was left outside last winter with temperatures going to just - 6 C - but for a whole week, actually more like ten days of frost with small periods of time above 0C… it completely died off and was without leaves until August. Now it looks pretty healthy, but it is nothing compared to the one I kept inside the greenhouse.
Here is a comparison with some Cattley guavas that I kept inside the greenhouse and put outside this summer - they are full of fruit. I have to place them inside the greenhouse at this time, but normally the fruit will ripen.
Well then i shut my mouth because you have the right one! 
I think it is super interesting that we both seem to be in the limit where this plant can be grown inside and outside. For you it seems that Longipet really works well with its increased vigor when planted outside in the open field and mild winters.
But for me it seems that any guava needs more protection than that and can only survive and fruit in an unheated greenhouse. In the winter in that context Cattley actually seems to work better.
I can grow any araça variety with no problem but real guavas just on sheltered places and didn’t got any fruit yet.
That is great! For me it seems just a little bit more complicated, but that is the nice thing about zone pushing and being on the edge. Contrary to what I thought myself, the normal red and yellow cattley guavas seem to work best in my situation where I move them inside an unheated greenhouse around this time each year.
They ripen well in that situation and others - even if they seem more cold hardy - are more complicated to fruit.
I don’t have that kind of experience because i don’t grow anything inside…
Did you already try to grow inga vulpina? Its hardy and grows very well here…
@Solko your posts makes me both excited and a little worried about my longipetiolatum. If we compare to your climate and @Luisport’s climate, then I am pretty much in the middle between you two. But only if we’re talking about winter cold.
I’m about 300 miles south of Luis, and more than a thousand miles south of you. And instead of the maritime summers y’all have, my summers are blazing hot, humid, and fully subtropical. I’m curious to see if longipetiolatum is still much more vigorous than cattleianum for me under those conditions.
And even with winter cold, I’m not sure my winters are similar to yours. Even though we had 0 F temperatures here a few years ago, it’s pretty uncommon for me to have daytime temperatures that don’t go above 0 C. Usually, the severe cold only happens at night, and then mostly very late, just before morning. Then the sun comes up and, since I’m at 35 N (same as Tunisia, Crete, and Iraq) the warm winter sunshine heats up the air again. So thicker stems and evergreen plants that are simply larger and store more heat can handle much lower minimum temperatures here, since those minimums are almost always very short. And of course, in most winters the ground does not freeze.
A nurseryman who lives here in NC a bit west of me gave a talk about citrus at some point, and he was saying that there is no edible citrus than can survive 0 C–if that 0 C stays for days and days.
So I kind of wonder how much damage will a big, healthy longipetiolatum take during my normal winter low of 15 F, since, aside from the outer leaves, little to none of the plant will actually get that cold.
Then of course there’s dormancy. I’m not as worried about dormancy with these arazas though as I am with citrus. It takes citrus absolutely forever to go fully dormant, and they can come out of dormancy very easily as they try to bud out and bloom. It looks like araza really for warmer temperatures, and potentially have better hardiness on their non-dormant tissue. Swincher’s plant (or was it his myrcianthus? Still, that’s a close relative) showed frost tolerance on new leaves that would have probably killed a lot of new growth on citrus, even stems. And while they’re not as close relatives, my hardy eucalyptus show almost no difference in hardiness between new and old growth. In fact, my E. camphora grows straight through the winter. Again, not a guava, but in the same family. I’d say part of this is the kinds of cold they get in the southern hemisphere. Much like here on the east coast, winters can be very warm and mild in southern Brazil and in Salta province and other subtropical parts of South America that nevertheless get cold weather. Only during sudden outbursts of cold air from the south do those places get hard freezes. The subtropical plants that are hardy from those places probably rely less on winter dormancy and more on just having freeze resistant tissue or something to that effect.
Anyway, yellow cattleianum has been very easy for me so long as I keep the pots very well watered in summer (we get lots of summer rain, but not enough for these thirsty little plants), and I’ll be testing it in ground this winter, but I’ll be shocked if I don’t have to protect it at least some in order to get fruits. Will longipetiolatum do better? We’ll find out eventually.
The summer here is bone dry and easily i get +40C max temp for several days… but night temp is always cool… the secret is watering some times during the week…
I still irrigate daily. My soil stays bone dry always, until all my wood chips begin to create good soil I’m stuck with a daily water routine. Been adding wood chips a few times per year for 3-4 years now so it’s slowly working. Speaking of which I need to grab some more before we get any cool temperatures.
Our nighttime temperatures are still quite high 20c+ however next week looks to cool down a bit. But like @Luisport has said the key is planting something in a protected spot and if you need to offer some protection early on a few nights per year so be it. I enjoy trying to see if something will survive/thrive/die with varying levels of help.
