The investigative staff at Richard Lyons’ Nursery has never seen anything like it. Spondias dulcis has more names than an art thief on the run from Interpol: Pomme cythere in Trinidad and Tobago, cas mango in Cameroon and the Maldive Islands, juplón in Costa Rica, buah long long among the Chinese in Singapore, cajá manga…
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In the ideal world, when a plant name is changed, you’d prefer for the new moniker to be simpler than the old one. But life isn’t always fair, and there’s no better example than that of the plant commonly called Blackberry Jam Fruit. Long known as Randia formosa, the species is now named, alas, Rosenbergiodendron…
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Fresh Plaza is an online publisher of news concerning the global fresh produce industry. An article it ran this week reports that consumers around the U.S. are discovering what we in southern Florida have known for a long time: Jackfruit is really good to eat! Richard Lyons’ Nursery has been growing jackfruit for over a…
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Bixa orellana, the Lipstick Tree, has to be one of the most fascinating plants found anywhere. It has been valuable, versatile and popular for so long that no one knows exactly where in the New World Tropics it originated. The species name honors Francisco de Orellana, a Spanish conquistador of the 16th century, who, according…
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Many of us reside in southern Florida because of the wonderful winter climate that permits us not only to enjoy the great outdoors without bundling up, but to cultivate thousands of tropical plants. However, as the old saying goes, there is no good unalloyed, and not every plant is benign. If you own a dog…
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