Sometimes you learn about a tree with flavorful fruit that you had never heard of before and wonder what took you so long. Or maybe you heard of the tree, but had put it out of your mind due to its absence from gardens and nurseries, in addition to its fruit being nowhere to be found in your grocery store’s produce section.
Learning about unfamiliar fruit has been a recurring experience for me this year as I followed the ripening of fruits in “Jacques’ Food Garden,” a monthly feature on Greg Alder’s website (gregalder.com). Each month this year, Alder visited Jacques to see which fruits were ripening in his garden — actually, an expansive hillside collection of 200 fruiting trees, shrubs, and vines. Videos of monthly tours through Jaques’ garden are available on Alder’s site.
Jacques grows his fruits in Poway, around 25 miles north of San Diego, where the climate is slightly milder than that found in much of the greater Los Angeles area.
One of the fruits that Jacques harvests at this time of year is longan (LONG-in), hanging in large clusters on a tree (Dimocarpus longan) that reaches around 20 feet tall with equal spread. Longan means “dragon’s eye” in Chinese and references the fruit’s resemblance — white pulp surrounding a black seed — to that ocular organ. The fruit has the size of a large grape, and its taste and texture are similar to what you find in grapes as well.
Each longan is encased in a brown shell and hangs in a massive cluster from summer until late fall, depending on variety. Consumption of longans may be delayed for a few days following harvest, but only if you cut them still attached to their stems. This is how you will find them when they are sold at farmers’ markets or markets that specialize in Asian produce.
Incidentally, the strategy of keeping produce that is picked when ripe attached to its stems is advisable whether talking about longans, grapes, or tomatoes. When a fruit is ripe, removal of the stem triggers water loss through the stem end of the fruit, reducing its plumpness, juiciness, and freshness. Once tomatoes are detached from the stem, they should be kept on your counter with the stem end down until they are ready to eat; otherwise, moisture will escape if the stem end is exposed.
And as long as we’re on the subject of appreciating peak flavor and freshness, corn — whose late varieties also ripen in the fall — is another case in point. In order to enjoy corn at its peak of freshness and flavor, it must be placed in a pot of boiling water as soon as it’s plucked from the stalk and eaten immediately thereafter. If you choose to put corn aside for a day or two, do not remove the husks since that will reduce kernel moisture and freshness.
When speaking of longan trees, the discussion must include the closely related lychee or litchi (LIE-chee or LEE-chee); the former pronunciation is Cantonese, while the latter is Mandarin. Both longin and litchi (Litchi chinensis) are native to China and East Asia, although longan is more cold-tolerant and is a safer bet for planting in the Los Angeles area.
The hardiness of litchi will increase, however, if it is protected from frost with a plastic tent and/or Christmas lights for its first few years in the ground. Litchi shares longan’s protocol for harvesting and storage with stems attached, although litchi is encased in a red leathery jacket. The fruit of these two trees looks the same inside, except that the litchi is more fragrant and sweeter. So prized is litchi in China that fruit from select varieties typically sells for as much as $10 per fruit. In 2002, the record price paid for a piece of fruit anywhere was broken when a single litchi weighing only half an ounce was sold at an auction in southern China for $67,000. It came from a 400-year-old tree that only produced several dozen fruit each year.
There are a number of legendary litchi trees and it was the dream of Jerry Dimitman to find and grow the elusive “Hanging Green” variety, so-called because of its green tip and green line running along its jacket. Dimitman was a legend in his own right. His Covina residence included an orchard with 30 litchi trees as well as many other seldom-seen arboreal tropical fruit species. Dimitman never divulged the orchard’s whereabouts out of concern that exotic fruit fanatics would never give him peace. His appearance at the Alhambra Farmers’ Market always created a stir, when a long line of eager customers would impatiently wait to pick out some of his rare, yet reasonably priced fruit, which quickly sold out each time Dimitman, who passed away in 2012, visited the market.
Ironically enough, tropical longan and litchi belong to the same botanical family as three noteworthy California native trees. It’s the soapberry family (Sapindaceae), and its members have soapy compounds known as saponins embedded in fruit, leaves, and bark. During rain, water running down the trunk of certain soapberry species will create a bubbly, soapy lather as it reaches the earth. California buckeye or horse chestnut (Aesculus californica) is one of our most brilliant flowering trees as it is covered with thick, upright, banana-shaped, fragrant flower wands, 4-8 inches long, in white or pale pink each spring. It will begin to leaf out next month, long before most deciduous trees will follow suit.
This tree’s pear-shaped fruit encloses a single two-inch seed or nut that does indeed resemble the eye of a buck. Maple trees belong to this family, represented in the California habitat by box elder (Acer negundo), whose form resembles that of the elderberry and whose wood is useful for making boxes. It attracts box elder bugs, those with the decorative red patterns on their backs, which, unfortunately, become a nuisance when congregating around your house. The tree is kind of nondescript except for its Flamingo and Variegata varieties, whose leaves are highlighted with white and pink or offer a mixture of cream and green, respectively. Bigleaf maple (Acer macrophylla) is a prominent native shade tree but in reaching a height of more than 50 feet needs a jumbo-size yard in order to thrive.
The classic soapberry tree (Sapindus saponaria), although not a California native, is perfectly suited to our Mediterranean climate and displays its beauty as a street tree in Santa Barbara. This is an excellent shade tree that grows to a manageable height of around 20 feet with a symmetrical dome. We probably don’t see more of it due to its deciduous nature. However, its beauty is expressed in dense 6-10 inch spring flower panicles followed by scads of glistening golden fruit that darkes to a comely reddish-brown with age.
California native of the week: The flowers of Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa) look like small, single-layered white roses. This makes complete sense since the species is a member of the rose family. But then a remarkable transformation takes place as each rose turns into a collection of ethereal, feathery pink wisps that serve as seed dispersal agents. Once established, Apache plume can make do with little, if any, summer water and can tolerate both light shade and imperfect soil drainage. Although usually planted as an accent shrub, it may reach six feet in height and, planted in a row, could serve as a low hedge or informal screen. Although deciduous, it makes up for its downtime by blooming for two months or more in spring and summer.
Do you have an exotic fruit tree story to tell or perhaps a memory of Jerry Dimitman’s fruit stand at the Alhambra Farmers Market? If so, send it to joshua@perfectplants.com. Your questions and comments as well as gardening conundrums and successes are always welcome.