VAST MANGO IN PARRISH
by Peter Ray
This mango weighed in at a few ounces more than five pounds when it came off the tree. It is the Lancetilla variety from Honduras, introduced in 2001 by Dr. Richard Campbell of Fairchild Gardens. Surprisingly, this gigantic fruit is borne on a tree that is easily maintained at a height of no more than ten feet. On the rating scale of Pine Island Nursery, it rates (on a scale of five): four for flavor, five for color, five for disease resistance, five for tree quality, and three for production. My tree, bearing this year for the first time, produced three fruits. It is now about six feet high. The fiberless flesh is aromatic with an intensely sweet flavor. If another plus is needed, it is said to be a late-season fruit, though mine are coming off the tree at the end of July.
Having grown up in South Florida as a kid with teeth festooned with the strings of the aptly-named turpentine mango, I think it proper to offer my gratitude to Richard Campbell and his father Carl for bringing the mango to the state of development we enjoy today. Back then, the one good mango was the Haden. Though still hard to turn down, Haden today is a third-rate mango.
This is the time to remind mangophiles that most of your trees would like to become forty foot high monsters. The squirrels can get to those fruits at the top of a forty foot tree, but you can't. As soon as the fruit is off, prune your trees to ten or twelve feet, favoring horizontal branches and eliminating vertical ones. Of course, those of us who live East of I-75 are likely to get a little help from winter cold fronts to keep the trees from getting too big, but you can do a neater job with a pair of lopping shears.
