THE LYCHEE TREE AND FRUIT

The Lychee (Litchi chinensis) is a subtropical evergreen tree that produces one of the world's finest fresh fruits. The tree is indigenous to China and the fruit is there highly esteemed. It comes from southeastern China where the climate is much like that of Central and South Florida. The fresh ripe fruit is about the size and color of a large ripe strawberry. It has a very thin but tough skin, the upper part of which is removed between the thumb and first finger before the fruit is eaten. It is very high in sugar content and has a flavor all its own. Its great value is as a fresh fruit, but it may be preserved, and it deep freezes perfectly, thus spreading consumption throughout the year.

The fresh fruit of the Lychee tree has for many centuries been considered by the Chinese to be the finest of the fruits. It has met with instant acceptance by the Americans. The Chinese could not bring it into the United States in the fresh state, so they dried it and shipped it in as "Dried Lychees”  and which many American consumers call "Lychee (or Litchi) Nuts." The fresh Lychee is as much superior to the dried Lychee as the fresh peach is to the dried peach.

The fruit grows in clusters on the limb tips of evergreen trees that may ultimately reach a height of forty feet with about the same spread. Each tree produces both staminate and pistillate flowers. There are many varieties of Lychee. Fruit producing trees of the variety called Brewster, from Henghwa, Fukien Province, China, are growing in several hundred locations in Florida, ranging from Orlando to Homestead. Both coasts and the Ridge, Everglades and Redlands districts are represented. Fukien province is on the extreme northern fruiting range of the Lychee in China and the Brewster variety is therefore we1l adapted to Florida.

Not only is the Lychee a most desirable tree on account of its fine fruit, but it is a highly ornamental evergreen dooryard tree of symmetrical lines. Several times each year it throws out a new growth of leaves, usually wine colored, and when the fruit is ripe its bright red clusters present a striking object in the landscape.

Like citrus, Lychee seedlings cannot be depended upon to reproduce true to parentage, and as budding is unsuccessful, Chinese air-layering and inarching are depended upon for exact reproduction. It usually requires from four to six years for layered or inarched trees to bear. Seedlings may require twice that length of time

The Lychee is a subtropical, not a tropical tree. It needs a warm location and yet seems not to fruit well without a win-