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Old 16-08-2007, 06:05 PM posted to rec.gardens
infiniteMPG infiniteMPG is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2007
Posts: 19
Default Guanabana Tree (& fruit) and Ear Trees

We recently visited a nature park here in west central Florida. There
was a really neat tree with some strange looking fruit that we found
later appeared to be a type of guanabana tree. The fruit was sort of
like a mango, pulpy and yellow inside (didn't try to eat any of them,
we at a park), sort of symetric egg shaped about 6" long and small
pointed spikes growing in all directions. From one of the fruits on
the ground and broken open, I snagged several of the seeds. We looked
it up and these fruits and trees have a lot of great qualities and
they are tropical so well suited for west central Gulf Coast life.
What we were wondering is what the best way to germinate/grow the
seeds and start some trees of our own? And we nailed it as a
guanabana tree but the strange thing is everything we could find shows
the seeds to be dark brown. These seeds are yellow and look almost
like corn kernels. Anyone familiar with the different variations of
this tree?

We also have some ear tree seeds we would also like to grow. And
we're not all up on the variations of this as the one we had removed
from our front yard had an ear shaped seed pod and I don't recall the
tree having very prominent flowers. Just down the road are some
similar looking trees with bright red flowers but the seed pods look
like gigantic snap pea pods only woody and dark brown, about a foot
long. And then we saw some others that look a lot like that with
yellow flowers and tiny thin seed pods.

Does anyone have a good source for finding what variations of the ear
tree family are? And any value in the seeds pods? Before we had the
big one taken down we collected a whole shopping bag full of seed
pods. Beautiful tree, a shame it happened to take root too close to
the foundation of our home. Hopefully the tiny offspring growing in
the middle of our front yard will be as spectacular. :O)

Thanks,
Scott