Quick update on Mangoes in Southern California. I posted the following on another thread but thought to cross post the quote here given this thread is about tropical fruits in SoCal 
Note that this is advice from local members who have apparently grown a lot of mangoes. It is NOT stuff I’ve tested.
Do you know which sapadillo are chikoo?
Isn’t chicoo/chikoo/chickoo (seems to be spelled all 3 ways) just another common name for M. zapota aka sapodilla? I didn’t think it referred to any particular variety.
I’m not sure. A friend has me looking for it. I think some varieties are from South America and some are from India, so I’m guessing chikoo is Indian variety only, but not sure.
Yes that’s right.
There does seem to be some confusion amongst folks online and also in person where people think sapote and sapodilla are the same thing. Maybe that’s the confusion here? If you look at pictures of Mamey Sapote and Chikoo, and don’t know the relative sizes/etc you could get confused.
I suspect that’s part of the confusion? IDK.
Where are you located? Or where is the friend who wants to grow this located? That might help folks give better advice.
Also welcome to the thread and thanks for posting.
Sapodilla is indeed a sapote, in the sense that it’s in the family Sapotaceae (same as mamey sapote, green sapote, canistel, and others). By contrast, “black sapote” is not a true sapote, it’s a persimmon.
The confusion comes from the fact that “sapote” just means any soft/mushy fruit, so it’s not a real botanical category unless you are referring to Sapotaceae as “the sapote family.”
Right 100%. Sorry I meant folks confuse the specific chikoo with the general sapote varieties out there and then get confused. Reading my response above again, I realize I wasn’t clear at all.
You said it much more clearly thank you!
And I didn’t even know the 2nd part of your post that any soft fleshy fruit is called that! That’s super interesting and is definitely contributing to the confusion. TIL. Thanks!
I don’t know much about them. I only just had the pleasure of having a canistel a few weeks ago and was blown away. I didn’t know black sapote is a persimmon. I’ll have to go read more on it. I wonder if it’s related to Mexican Black Persimmon.
Edit:related, but not closely.
Here’s some more reading on it:
The gist is this is from the Nahuatl (Aztec) word “tzapotl” which meant any soft fruit, so it was already part of the name of many of the things we call “sapotes” today, since many of those were known to the Aztecs.
Funnily enough, white sapote also isn’t Sapotaceae. Sometimes things aren’t just black and white, pun intended.
Haha good one
Good one!!!
@Gkight I managed to get a nice air-layered Ice Cream Bean plant. Are you growing yours in a pot and does it produce? Any tips on growing it in a pot? I’m debating trying to find a spot in the garden va keeping it in a 15gal pot (I just transplanted it into a 15gal pot from the 1 gal it came in). Thanks!
This winter has been particularly mild along the US west coast on account of El Niño. We never got that hard freeze in the north bay that we usually get two, three times between December and March. So this was definitely a good year to have started plants that are marginal for the area.
Hi @epiphyte - Wanted to check in to see how your trees came through the winter and if the cherimoya and Atemoyas are showing signs of growth. Btw do you also do Ice Cream Bean?
I posted on the other thread but I managed to snag some good varieties from the local OC CRFG fruit sale the other day. Looking for a good spot to put the Cherimoya and the Atemoya into the ground so they can begin growing (fingers crossed) though the Atemoya looks a lot stronger than the cherimoya I snagged. Wondering if I need to find a stronger tree from somewhere.
ugh, i totally missed the oc rare fruit sale!! you didn’t get a cherry of the rio grande? i really want a 5 gallon one.
my fruit trees were fine this winter. cherimoya and atemoya are growing, as well as biriba. no growth yet on annona reticulata. i don’t plan to put an atemoya in the ground. they seem to graft easy enough onto cherimoyas.
i have 2 or 3 or 4 different ice cream bean trees. hard to tell them apart. they are nitrogen fixers so i try to plant them next to fruit trees that i want to boost.
I had so many of them all from seed from some fruit I bought. I have about 10 left in pots and I planted a few last summer and they were only a few inches tall, so they all died to the ground basically. I’m waiting to see if any come back, two have green trunk on a scratch test. But I plan to put at least two more in the ground this year and if they thrive great if not oh well I don’t need 10 of the same thing in a pot. Nothing is taller than a foot and a half so no fruit yet
I watched a video on a lady growing ice cream bean trees in her yard. She had one in the ground and one in either a 15 or 25g. The one in the ground looked like it was around 10ft tall, the one in the pot was maybe 2ft in the same amount of time. She also said that the in ground one was developing flower buds for the first time and the potted one wasn’t. Although I know nothing of her care routine, a basic observation would say a pot stunts there growth somewhat. Thats about all I found about growing them in pots when I was looking.
Mine (both potted and in ground) seemed to have stopped growing after rapidly grow to 6 inches from seed. I imagine they are focusing on root development at the moment.