Hak Ip Too Tempting

Meet my Hak Ip lychee, fruiting for the first time. I took this photo this morning and planned to sample the fruits in a few days, waiting for them to ripen some more. Lo and behold, my yard men did not want to wait so they went ahead and helped themselves. Fancy that! Lucky they left me a few bunches so I can still know how they taste like.

Hak Ip lychees were introduced into South Florida just prior to hurricane Andrew in August 1992, and since have experienced widespread commercial plantings and are just now beginning to come into significant production here. This fruit has many desirable characteristics in a lychee: great flavor, large size, small seed and nice coloration. Lychee trees are monoecious meaning that an individual tree produces both male and female flowers. On the other hand, tropical fruit trees such as guavas, passion fruits, sugar apples, sapodillas and citrus produce flowers having both male and female sexual parts on the same flower, not like the lychees.