I did a summary of a 10 year long thread on the Tropical Fruits Forum. The question was name your top five fruits. These were the #1 top fruit from 182 respondents who ranked their top 5.
Mango 58
durian 22
cherimoya 14
lychee 11
mangosteen 10
orange 6
cherry 6
watermelon 4
sugar apple 4
pluot 3
peach 3
persimmon 3
jack fruit 3
passion fruit 3
avocado 3
25 other fruits received 1 or 2 votes each
40 different fruits topped someone’s list.
It is a tropical fruit forum but thought it might be of interest here.
TFF is also replete with amateur plant sellers – thinking they’ve found a quick way to get rich, as is Ourfigs. So I’m taking the list with several grains of salt.
Longan is very similar to lychee and Rambutan. If you like 1 there is a good chance you like all 3. Lychee is my favorite of those 3. Im revising my list i didn’t realize sweet cherry was there it is one of my favorites.
5 favorites isn’t enough for me. Dragon fruit , passion fruit etc. Are really good also , maybe have everyone add their favorites. Technically bananas and acai are favorite of mine also.
We have dry weather here in Kansas sometimes so peaches are so good here on a drought year. They are much smaller that way. Can’t imagine the heavanly taste of a west Texas peach. Colorado grows really great peaches in their dry areas also. A water starved peach must be the best fruit in the world but i have plenty. Have no idea why Georgia peaches are so good but they are. Lychee i can’t grow yet so i’m like everyone i want what i dont have.
I have 3 lychee trees, nada for 7 years now. I have fruit from my 2 Long an trees. Very hard to grow Lychee, but I did see a picture of lychee tree with lots of fruit from my ex-coworker.
Is there a particular reason why you keep spelling Longan as two words? I’m just curious. I have begun putting the “NA” in front of Pawpaw to denote that it is the North American Pawpaw that I am talking about and not Papaya, so I was wondering if, similarly, you are spelling it that way for a specific reason.
Was able to grow one nectarine in Kansas called a “Yum Yum” . Have no real experience with other nectarines. Have tried others but with so few being able to grow here i can’t speak of what they should be like at their best. They seem to not like our winters. Reliance, contender, and flat wonderful peaches all do ok here. Reliance does the best of the 3 for me. On a dry year they are very sweet on a wet year they can be sour.
Mango. Its not just the flavor but also flesh to seed ratio. Thats why I don’t see Lychee or Longan getting more votes overall
Lack of stones fruits - it is a skewed population given the forum membership. Its possible they haven’t tasted the ones grown in ideal conditions
Surprising:
Lack of banana - I’d have thought non-Cavendish varieties should appeal to a broad range of palates and everyone has a baseline expectation of what a banana should taste like (unlike Durian or a Jackfruit)
In America we call it Longan. Really it is 龙眼 aka dragon eye or Long Yan Rou. So when you say Long Yan or Long Yan Rou thats not wrong. I’m saying it wrong as longan because it is what we say but it is Chinese fruit so the chinese way is correct. To be specific Longan is native to Southeast Asia so that includes Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and China.
I might have to have nectarine on my top 5 as well. Tremendous fruits! I currently only grow Flavortop. I had meant to graft more last year but couldn’t keep up with my to do list. Maybe this year.
Longan is probably my favorite fruit. I think it’s a chemical thing or quirk of my biology. I think I like the flavor of rambutan more but I’ll eat 5 times as much longan. And then I feel like giving high fives and throwing karate kicks and having a good old time.
This thread added new reasons to consider greenhouse growing for some of the fruits mentioned. A quick search made longan sound like a challenging fruit to grow- plant in the driest, sunniest part of your yard with full sun and no other plants or grasses within 25 feet.
