What is a mango?
By Chelsie Vandaveer
January 8, 2004
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The mango (Mangifera indica Linnaeus) is a member of the Anacardiaceae, a family known for some notoriously toxic plants like poison ivy. The juicy mango is considered the "peach of the tropics". Depending upon the variety, and there are probably a thousand varieties, the rich fruit may be round, oval, oblong, or kidney-shaped and, when ripe, vary in color from deep green to yellow, to yellow with red 'shoulders' to all red.
The mango tree is a lowland tropical growing to 30 meters (100 feet) in height with a spread as great. The tree puts down a taproot to 6 meters (20 feet) often reaching the water table. With a little care, the tree may continue bearing fruit for 300 years.
Mango trees are believed native to eastern India and Burma (Myanmar). The wild type mango produces a small, highly fibrous, and seldom eaten fruit. The cultivated mangoes are thought the result of hybridization between the Mangifera indica and its close relative, Mangifera sylvatica.
Cultivated mangoes are of two races: the Indian race has a monoembryonic seed producing a single seedling and the Indo-Chinese/Philippine race with a polyembryonic seed that produces up to five seedlings. The polyembryonic race apparently descended from fruit carried by Buddhist monks in their voyages to China and the Malay Archipelago in the fourth and fifth centuries BCE.
Mango trees often start producing fruit at six years and bear every year until about ten. After that, the trees tend to bear fruit in alternate years. But sometimes, the mango will produce fruit on some branches and not on others. The following year, the branches that rested will fruit and the branches that fruited will rest.
Area de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica has posted a photograph of a mango tree with fruit. To view the photograph, click on the link:
http://www.acguanacaste.ac.cr/loras_acg/images/mango.html
(Compiled from: Hortus Third, Staff L.H. Bailey Hortorium, Cornell University, MacMillan Publishing, 1976; "Mango", Fruits of Warm Climates, Julia F. Morton, Miami, 1987; and "Mango", California Rare Fruit Growers, 1996)
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