562 



The Journal of Heredity 



Vegas, and gives promise of becoming 

 a valuable thing. 



OPPORTUNITIES WITH THI-: .MANGO 



In all parts of the island the mango is 

 one of the most abundant of fruits. 

 During July and August it reigns 

 supreme, filling the markets ever\'where. 

 Many Cubans prefer the mango to all 

 other fruits, though there are some who 

 would place the pineapple and the anon 

 [Annona squamosa) ahead of it, and a 

 few might even consider the sapote or 

 sapodilla (Achras zapota) superior. With 

 very few exceptions, however, the 

 varieties or types of mango grown 

 throughout the island are inferior ones, 

 scarcely worthy of propagation, and the 

 opporttmity for improvement is great. 



Nearly all Cuban mangos are poly- 

 embryonic, and reproduce themselves 

 more or less true to type when grown 

 from seed. This peculiarity of certain 

 mangos has been recognized for some 

 time; many years previously, however, 

 when English horticulturists took up 

 the improvement of the mango in India, 

 they found that seedlings from the best 

 varieties were usually much inferior to 

 the parent, and they were forced to 

 depend upon vegetative propagation for 

 the perpetuation of good mangos. The 

 Indian mangos, in many cases at least, 

 are monoembryonic, and seedlings do 

 not come true to type. The West 

 Indian mangos arc separable into numer- 

 ous groups, and it has long been known 

 to the natives that a seed from a mango 

 of any given type would produce a 

 mango of the same type; this re])roduc- 

 tion of type is so perfect, indeed, that 

 among twenty or thirty seedlings of one 

 type the fruits will be as similar in 

 every character as the fruits of a 

 grafted variety. The exi)lanation is 

 to be found in the ])()l\-embryonic 

 character of the seeds. 



Putting the case as sim])ly as jjo.ssible 

 we may say that the plants which grow 

 from the seed are not derived from a 

 fertilized sexual cell, as is usuallv the 



case in the vegetable kingdom, but 

 arise as buds in the tissues which sur- 

 round the female cell in the ovary. 

 Thus the question of sex does not enter 

 into the origin of these plants any more 

 than it does into the propagation of a 

 geranium by cuttings of the fleshy stem. 

 The mango tree produced in this fashion 

 naturally reproduces the characters of 

 its parent as truly as does a tree propa- 

 gated b}' the ordinary means of grafting, 

 since it is a case of vegetative reproduc- 

 tion in both instances.^ 



WELL-DEFINED TYPES 



The commonest Cuban mangos are divided 

 into two races, known to the natives as mango 

 and manga; the former is a tall, erect tree, 

 sometimes 60 feet high, with an oval, open 

 crown, the fruit elongated, laterally com- 

 pressed, usually curved and beaked at the 

 apex, the fiber surrounding the seed long and 

 coarse. The manga race, on the other hand, 

 is a low, sjjreading tree, 35 or 40 feet high, 

 with a dense, dome-shai)cd or flat-topped crown, 

 the fruit scarcely compressed laterally and 

 lacking a beak at the apex, the fiber more 

 abundant than in the mango race but much 

 finer. Two principal types of the manga race 

 are distinguished, manga amarilla, an elongated 

 fruit with orange colored flesh, and manga 

 blanca, an obliquely spherical form with pale 

 yellow flesh. Both these types are very well 

 defined and one may fin<l trees in various parts 

 of the island which jiroduce fruits absolutely 

 identical in appearance and character. Another 

 race which is less common but very highly 

 esteemed is the Filipino, which is believed to 

 have come from the Philipjjines by way of 

 Mexico; this is a rather small, erect tree with a 

 dense oval crown, i)roducing elongated, slender 

 fruits, compressed laterally, with very little 

 filler and of excellent flavor. 



Besides these ])rinci]ml races and types, 

 there are to be found, princi])ally at Cienfuegos 

 and in the vicinity of Santiago de Cuba, 

 several less important types, which though 

 very limited in distribution are very superior 

 in quality. The China and manga Mamey 

 of Cienfuegos, and the Biscochuelo of Santiago 

 de Cuba, are among the best of these, fruits of 

 all three being shii)])e(l to the Haluma markets, 

 where they sell at 10 to 25 cents each. These 

 t\'i)es have originated in certain gardens, where 

 seeds have l)een brought from other West 

 Indian islands or possibly from the Orient. 

 In most cases they have been propagated 

 locally, and the fruit i)roduced i)y seedlings 

 of the original tree or trees jiroves the remark- 

 able constancy of the jjolyembryonic mangos. 



'John Belling demonstrated that the emi)ryos, whith vary in numl)er from two to eiglit or ten, 

 are flerived from the tissue of the endosperm by budding. Whether the ovum itself develoi)S 

 into an embryo or not has never been ascertained; if it does, the effect of cross-fertilization might 

 be shown, and more variati(jn evidenced in the i)lant from the fertilized ovum than occurs in 

 those plants which arise from adventive emI)ryos. 



