1990 



MANGOSTEEN 



MANGROVE 



generations been called the "queen of fruits" and that 

 Queen Victoria offered a prize of ten pounds for the 

 first fruits which should be brought to her from India, 

 there appears to be nowhere in existence what would be 

 called a large orchard of mangosteens. It is hard to 

 understand why the culture of so delicious a fruit as the 

 mangosteen should not have been better understood 

 by horticulturists. 



In the Dutch East Indies, Java and Sumatra in 

 particular, it is planted by the natives in their kam- 

 pongs as a dooryard tree. In Malacca and the Straits 

 Settlements there are a few small orchard plantings 

 owned chiefly by the Chinese. In Burliar Gardens in 

 the Nilgiri Hills of Madras Presidency, British India, 

 a few trees are growing. The native chiefs of the Sulu 

 Archipelago have scattered plantings of mangosteen 

 trees. A few small plantings have been made in Ceylon, 

 notably a small'orchard at Mirigama. Father D'Adran, 

 a noted Bishop of Cochin-China, established an orchard 

 of 300 to 400 trees at Lai Thiou not far from Saigon. 

 Trees of it have grown and fruited in the Botanic 

 Gardens of Jamaica, Trinidad, Dominica, and probably 

 elsewhere in the West Indies, and single 

 specimens have borne a few fruits on Kauai 

 and Maui Islands of the Hawaiian group. 

 The seeds from these successful trees have 

 furnished hundreds of young plants for 

 small plantations which will soon come 

 into bearing. 



2321. The mangosteen 



Garcinia Mangostana. 

 (XH) 



The reason for this very inadequate distribution of so 

 remarkable a domesticated fruit-tree seems to lie in the 

 difficulty which the young plants seem to have in estab- 

 lishing themselves. If the seedlings are not shaded, the 

 first pair of young leaves is generally injured and the 

 plants stunted or even killed outright. It is thought that 

 horticulturists do not yet understand the root-system 

 of the magnosteen and that when it is understood, a 

 vast extension of the culture of this fruit will take place. 

 This may come about through the use of stocks which 

 are less particular in their soil-requirements. Geo. Oli- 

 ver's experiments have proved that the mangosteen can 

 be successfully inarched upon a number of the related 

 species of the same genus. On Garcinia xanthochymus, 

 which is a much more vigorous tree and grows on many 



types of soil, and is apparently quite at home in Hawaii, 

 Natal, Madeira, Cuba, and many other localities in the 

 subtropics it seems to grow successfully. As 169 species 

 of garcinias have already been described, the probability 

 is great of finding a suitable stock for the mangosteen. 

 The best orchards of mangosteen in Ceylon and Sin- 

 gapore have been established on soils characterized by a 

 high clay content, combined with a large percentage of 

 coarse material, with a very small amount of silt, and 

 upon locations where the water-table comes to within 

 6 feet of the surface. The impression is current that 

 the mangosteen requires a wet but well-drained soil 

 and a very humid atmosphere. While the former 

 statement appears to be true, the latter is not so, for 

 the tree which has fruited on the Island of Kauai is in a 

 dry but irrigated part of that island, with only 6 inches 

 of rainfall, where it has to be irrigated twice a month. 

 The diseases of the mangosteen are not yet known. 

 It is likely to have its own specific diseases, and when 

 transplanted to new environments, may be attacked by 

 new parasites. Fruits are frequently found with drops 

 of yellow gamboge inside which make them unpalatable, 

 but whether this is really a disease or merely the result 

 of external bruises, caused by the fruits being knocked 

 about by heavy winds when nearly mature, will have 

 to be determined by experiment. 



Although the mangosteen is a very delicate fruit, 

 it has an exceedingly thick tough rind, and on this 

 account it is likely to be a good shipper. Fruits which 

 were sent in cold storage to Wash- 

 ington from Trinidad were excellent 

 when eaten twenty-one days later, 

 even though they had then been 

 out of cold storage over a week. The 

 fact that when one of 

 a shipment of fruits 

 decays, its rind hard- 

 ens instead of becom- 

 ing soft, is an im- 

 portant point in its 

 favor. 



Just how much cold 

 the mangosteen can 

 stand has not yet 

 been determined. 

 Repeated attempts to 



grow it in Florida and California have failed, 

 although, for that matter, many attempts in 

 the tropics have been unsuccessful. The 

 limited experience which horticulturists have 

 had with it seems to indicate that it will not 

 stand frost. It is apparently a strictly tropi- 

 cal tree, moisture-loving and more or less 

 shade -tolerant when young, adapted to 

 regions of heavy rainfall; Porto Rico and 

 Panama are unquestionably excellent places 

 in which to experiment with its culture. 

 When one considers that so far no selection of varie- 

 ties of the mangosteen has been made, notwithstanding 

 the fact that practically seedless fruits are of frequent 

 occurrence, and further that the tree belongs to a large 

 genus of fruit-bearing trees, at least fifteen of which are 

 known to bear edible fruit, some of them as large as 

 small melons, and that these are scattered in Australia, 

 the Malay region, South China, Africa, Brazil, and 

 Central America, some of them being able to withstand 

 light frosts, it becomes evident that in the development 

 and breeding of the mangosteen and in the discovery of 

 a suitable stock for it, there lies a most promising field 

 for horticultural research. DAVID FAIRCHILD. 



MANGROVE. A name applied to certain small 

 trees that grow along tropical and semi-tropical sea- 

 coasts and produce many trunks or rooting shoots 

 whereby the plant holds its place or marches on tide- 

 flats. The name is usually restricted to Rhizophora 



