Welp, one seedling, the smallest, recently died to the ground. I’ll leave the pot be in case it sprouts again.
The rest are doing well. Significant differences in size, either because of differences in vigor or in germination time.
Some potted plants I got earlier this summer are 2X in size already. I’m liking the growth rate.
The same one month ago. Note the stakes in comparison.
Are you not going to plant one and see how it does?
Probably not this year. I’m thinking I’ll push them a lot this year and give them heat and light over winter to get them to size up, hopefully to fruiting size.
I’m also kinda taking advantage of the fact that y’all are doing the winter testing already. Why risk my own seedlings if you guys are doing it 
Next winter though…
In fairness, I probably get the lowest temperatures out of the three or four of us on the forum growing these things. So I’ll need to do my own testing regardless (in some ways I think swincher gets colder winters, but it depends on how you measure I guess).
I’m debating getting more seeds actually. If these things are actually hardy for me and taste good, by the time I know for sure they are I’ll want to have already planted more of them. I’m thinking of preemptively planting more in case I decide I would have wanted more in the future. If I do plant another half dozen or so, I might actually do some cold tests with one of my bigger current seedlings.
I think I only have 2 seedlings growing now. I won’t plant them out the one I planted got chewed up by something (it was only teeny tiny tho) I knew it was a longshot
I ended up with four seedlings of the new unknown one from Marcos, one of them was eaten by something and is regrowing:
The other two went in the ground earlier this week:
They join my two standard pungens seedlings that have been in the ground a few years. Those are doing pretty well this year despite some watermelons crowding them a bit, though they definitely seem to be in a low bush growth habit more than y’all’s:
I would assume the low habit is due to freeze damage?
Very curious to see how those new ones from Marcos handle the cold. I was so close to buying some myself.
Yes, definitely due in large part to freeze damage, but also it just seems like it wants to bush out, even when a branch tip isn’t damaged it often grows multiple shoots at the start of each flush.
I have appreciated reading through this thread. I’ve been interested in Guabiju for some time, but only recently acquired a plant. I’m in hot inland Northern California (9b). My plant is in a 15g pot while I am working out where it might be happiest to be planted in my yard. I’ll grab a picture and post it to follow up, but the plant has so far thrived through a week of 110F+ temps, though it was on the North side of the house and receiving 3 or so hours sun a day between the morning and late afternoon. Looking forward to being a part of the Guabiju conversation here!
i will have to post pics of my guabijus soon, i’m in the FL panhandle and they love the heat and humidity here (our rainy season is May through October), it’s been consistently in the 90s or hotter since May (my thermometers are in the shade btw so i don’t know the exact temps in full sun), they especially loved it in July, where it rained daily, they have grown quite a bit, the in-ground ones i have not pruned but the potted ones i have pruned twice so far to get them to branch out more, they are also very thirsty trees, kind of like jaboticaba. my two oldest ones in the ground are nice and bushy.
the branching is similar to how cattley guavas branch, with multiple shoots, i’m also trying to keep my cattleys in bush form
I’m really curious to see how long these seedlings take to bloom and fruit. The growth rate seems really good on this species…
I got curious about the native habitat for these plants so I did some looking around on iNaturalist. The habitat was about what I expected, subtropical mountains and down into the humid Chaco. What I didn’t expect was…
Y’all, these things get big!
Wikipedia says they get 10 meters tall. I feel like that’s a little on the stingy side, at least for these big old forest trees. Maybe in the open they’re shorter?
I think many of the trees from those south American mountain forests form enormous trees in old-growth forests but mostly stay as small trees or shrubs during human lifetimes. E.g., Luma apiculata trees in their native habitat are monsters, but even pretty old plantings in the UK are a fraction of that size.
That makes sense, especially for species from pretty far south in the temperate zone where winter are long and the sun is weak. That being said, a lot of stuff that’s slow in England grows much faster down here, especially if they’re heat loving plants or have a high sunlight requirement. Citrus, many conifers, crepe myrtles, etc. and even oaks, are honestly pretty fast growers here, especially compared to how they grow in the PNW or the UK.
Myrcianthus pungens is more of a subtropical species, and at least my small plants are growing at a nice pace. I’m hopeful that they’re gonna size up quickly and start fruiting. I’d hate for them to be like boxwood or English yew, just sitting there for years barely growing and so taking forever to reach fruiting size.
We’ll see next year, I’ll try and take more careful measurements of their growth rate.
Based on what I’m seeing with y’all on the east coast, I think you’ll get to fruiting size much faster than mine will. My largest one after a few years is still so little lol.
The poor thing probably thinks some dumb bird dropped it off in Patagonia and now it’s stuck there screaming “please, take me north” not knowing the folly of going north.
Yeah, I’m hoping my fruits before yours, it’ll vindicate my choice of not living in a city with good coffee and easy times growing Luma and monkeypuzzle. On the flip side, man, your soil is so much nicer than mine, haha
I was just thinking something similar when I was planting a tree yesterday. It’s a little sandy and a little acidic but drains so well and has great micro-nutrients and pretty good macros other than nitrogen, which is easy enough to supplement.
Beautiful trees, thanks for sharing
