MY FAVOURITE FRUIT
SCIENTIFIC NAME: Mangifera indica Lam
FAMILY: Anacardiaceae
Before we came to Australia we didn't know anything about the mango, we had not even heard that such fruit exists. After moving to Sydney one of our friends came to visit us, and after she left we found on the kitchen sink something hairy and slightly yellowish-orangey. To us it looked like a Big Boy soap pad for washing dishes. My wife was using it, severely, for scrubbing pots and constantly complained that the pad had no foam and the hairs were so fine that they were useless for scrubbing. With disgust she left it on the window sill and we forgot all about it. After a few weeks the friend asked us whether we had planted the mango stone in the garden. It was the beginning of our love of mangoes.
Surprisingly, the seed grew, and in very few years brought the first fruit. Nobody believed that the beautiful fruit was grown from so tormented a stone. It was big, nicely coloured fruit with superior taste and we had lots of fruit every year, to the envy of all gardeners.
Still, we were inexperienced in the method of eating it. Once I noticed my co-worker standing at the sink in the position of a very sick person. When I asked if he was sick and needed help, he straightened up and showed me the reason - he was eating a mango. Very soon we found the best way to eat it (it was difficult to remove the mango stains from shirts): naked in the bath tub. But practice makes perfect and now we are able to consume several mangos with minimal damage to our garments.
When we were going to sell our house in Sydney, our neighbour asked if she could replant the tree in her garden. We were very dubious about the result, the tree was about 10 years old, but we agreed. To our surprise, when we visited Sydney a few years later, the tree was growing and bearing fruit.
On our block in Queensland were two mangoes. One common, a nice, but very big tree, and the 2nd, a Bowen type, just at the beginning of its bearing life. I severely cut the old one and every stump I grafted with a different type, about 6 altogether. Only 1 failed (banana type), the others prospered and are bearing nice fruit in good seasons.
The small tree next to this is now a very big and high tree, and it seems that it is there for the enjoyment of a flock of fruit bats.
We have yet another mango tree in our front garden. This one we won 8 years ago in an RFCA raffle, and this bears nice dark-purple mangoes which turn partly orangey yellow on the side. Because it flowers later than the others, it is usually the only one with fruit in rainy years. It is an exhibition type but its slightly turpentine taste is objectionable to some gourmets.
To conclude, I would like to tell you the secret of nice fruit without such frequent spoiling by anthracnose:
Nail short copper nails or pieces of copper wire around the trunks or branches about 1 cm apart just through the dead bark. Copper slowly dissolves and prevents Anthracnose fungi.
Result: nice unspoilt fruit without spraying. But mango is still our favourite fruit and we would never exchange it for any other.
DATE: April 2001
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
