Tropical Fruit Plants for Your Landscape

Today we're going to talk about great fruit trees that look great in your landscape. So the most obvious and most popular one is the coconut palm. You see coconut palms planted all over South Florida and in tons of areas of the tropics. It's not only an easy tree to grow, but it's productive and the fruit are very usable. Now not everybody uses the fruit on the coconut palm, but it's really good. We sell a lot of coconuts for coconut water especially. Some for meat, but a lot for coconut water. It's very good for you. The tree grows very easily in the tropics. It takes up very little ground space. It doesn't require trimming. You know the fronds just come off and the fruit is plentiful and very good for you. So definitely consider the coconut palm for your landscape, but we've got other fruit trees that would be great in your landscape also. Carambola is another ornamental fruit tree. It can be maintained at a very small size and be productive. And the fruit of course are attractive and tons better than anything you can buy from a grocery store. And when it's in full flower, flowers are very attractive also. But there's just clusters of very small lavender flowers that are quite striking. So carambola, definitely a small fruit tree that you can consider for your landscape. Yes, it will get big if you don't trim it, but you can trim it every year and keep it very small. Okay. Gurmechama is a tropical fruit plant. It can be maintained as a hedge, it can be a bush, or it can be trained as a small tree. Gurmechama is sometimes known as a tropical blueberry because the fruits sort of look like blueberries. It's got a nice attractive leaf, sort of dark glossy leaf, and it definitely can be kept at a small size. This is larger than you need to keep it. In any case, Gurmechama is a nice tropical fruit tree that can fit into many landscapes in Florida, in South Florida, and around the warm areas of the world. So black sapote can be a large tree, but it can be kept very small also. It's that miracle of trimming, and it's very attractive, and it makes a lot of fruit. You can watch our video on black sapote, which will give you a lot more information, but the fruit is also known as chocolate pudding fruit because of its texture and the look of it. It's very creamy, and it's mild. I like it a lot. I like it by itself. I like it dehydrated, and I also like it as an ingredient in smoothies, other drinks, and also in baked goods. There's a faux German chocolate cake that I make with black sapote. I like it a lot. So anyway, black sapote is one to consider, but I would suggest that you try the fruit first because the trees can produce a lot of fruit, and so it's even better to grow it if you like the fruit. So jackfruit is a very attractive tree. Love the dark green leaves. This one has a dense growth habit, and it doesn't seem to want to be really tall. There are other varieties of jackfruit that do want to be tall, but almost all the varieties can be maintained between 8 and 12 feet and still produce fruit. This is from another jackfruit tree, just to show you that even the shape of the leaves can vary. Anyway, the jackfruit can produce a lot of fruit, and it's a very unusual fruit because it attaches to the branches, the interior branches of the tree. It's a very popular fruit, but again, I would suggest that you taste the fruit before you plant the tree. Not everybody likes it. Most people like it, but the tree is very attractive for your landscape. Barbados cherry is an attractive shrub. It can be trained as a small tree, but best as a shrub. Very productive. It makes lots of cherry-shaped fruit. Very high in vitamin C. It can be as small as you like, really. It can be maintained as a small plant or a small hedge or a larger bush or a small tree. Consider putting a Barbados cherry into your yard. It fits into any yard, and it makes a great snack when you're out working in the yard. You just go over and take off the red fruit, and you have sustenance keep you going for another half hour or so before you need to go inside. So jabotacaba is a great tree for your landscape. It can be trained at any size. It doesn't even affect the fruiting because the happens inside the plant on the interior branches of the plant. So this is sort of a bushy jabotacaba, and then we have one that is not bushy. The way we trim this jabotacaba makes it easy to pick the fruit, and this is possibly more attractive in your landscape. I've seen jabotacaba as a hedge, and it's very attractive. The leaves are just, you know, very close together and make a nice screen, and it gives you great fruit. So passion vine is another delicious fruit that's attractive in a landscape. It readily wants to grow on things. So this one is going to grow on this fence, and the only thing that you need to do with passion vine is trim it back from time to time so it doesn't get where you don't want it, and of course pick the fruit. We're really looking forward to the fruit on this. It's been a while since we've had a passion vine. Passion vine does grow quickly. It's something that you need to trim back so it doesn't cover your entire yard, but it can make a very attractive arbor and also grow on fences very nicely. So sweet potato makes a great informal ground cover. It grows pretty well in partial shade and in sun, and not only do you get sweet potatoes, but the leaves actually have a lot of nutrition in them, and they're very tender. So anyway, sweet potato is an easy thing to grow. It makes attractive flowers and tasty greens. So miracle fruit is another small plant that you can either have in pots like on a patio or in the ground. They prefer not getting direct sunlight, so these are doing very nicely in the shade, and there's two different varieties as far as I know, and it's a very complicated varietal name. This is the big leaf variety, and then there is a small leaf variety. Both are very attractive, produce a very unique fruit, and lots of them. It's a great novelty for kids. It's very usable for diabetics, and it's also has been shown to be very helpful for people on chemotherapy. We're going to do a video just on the miracle fruit because there's a lot of information on it, but what you need to know right now is it's an attractive small plant, and it can be grown in the ground or in a pot. So that was a quick list of a few tropical fruit trees that look nice in a landscape and give you nice tropical fruit. The obvious choice of mangoes and lychee, we just didn't cover it all, and those are also ones to consider. A lot of people don't want to commit a large area to any tree and think lychee and mango are really big trees, but there are small alternatives and also ways to keep them small with pruning. But today's job was other tropical fruit. I hope this list was useful to you. Consider planting tropical fruit, vegetables, anything edible whenever you can. Not only is it good for you, they look nice, and it's lots of fun to plant things that you actually can eat.