Mango Tree in Bloom (Mangifera indica L.) - Macros of the …

May 31,2024

At the same time that I got the cannonball flower images yesterday, I got some mango ones as well. The mango trees started flowering in far north Queensland this year in May which is earlier than normal. Mangoes are an important crop in tropical Queensland. Grown for the fresh fruit, it is also big in the dried fruit market and mango wine and other produce. Strange as it may seem I have never taken macros of mangos before and I was keen to see what the flower close up looked like. Now I (we) know. Something about mangoes:- [Selections from www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/Morton/Mango_arS.html] It is a matter of astonishment to many that the luscious mango, Mangifera indica L., one of the most celebrated of tropical fruits, is a member of the family Anacardiaceae – notorious for embracing a number of highly poisonous plants. The mango tree is erect, 30 to 100 ft (roughly 10-30 m) high, with a broad, rounded canopy which may, with age, attain 100 to 125 ft (30-38 m) in width, or a more upright, oval, relatively slender crown. In deep soil, the taproot descends to a depth of 20 ft (6 in), the profuse, wide-spreading, feeder root system also sends down many anchor roots which penetrate for several feet. The tree is long-lived, some specimens being known to be 300 years old and still fruiting. Native to southern Asia, especially eastern India, Burma, and the Andaman Islands, the mango has been cultivated, praised and even revered in its homeland since Ancient times. Buddhist monks are believed to have taken the mango on voyages to Malaya and eastern Asia in the 4th and 5th Centuries B.C. The Persians are said to have carried it to East Africa about the 10th Century A.D. It was commonly grown in the East Indies before the earliest visits of the Portuguese who apparently introduced it to West Africa early in the 16th Century and also into Brazil. In Queensland