A lychee is a rare sub tropical fruit originating in South China where the lychee is very important in their culture and is famed as "the King of Fruits". The lychee fruit is about 1 to 1 1/2 inches in size, oval to rounded heart shaped and the bumpy skin is red in color. Once you peel the skin off, the crisp juicy flesh of a lychee fruit is white or pinkish, translucent and glossy like the consistency of a grape, but the taste is sweeter. Lychees have a sub acid sweet taste and have a wonderful freshness to them that is hard to describe. Unfortunately, lychees don't have a startlingly long shelf life, and are relatively easily damaged in transport and handling. The trees themselves bear heavily when the conditions suit them, but they are notoriously demanding in climatic conditions. So they will always be a luxury fruit, except as a canned fruit. Sun or fire dried lychees are known as lychee-nuts and taste a bit like a raisin. At 72mg of vitamin C per 100 grams of flesh, lychees are a very good source for this essential vitamin. Three lychee fruits would meet a third of an adult’s daily vitamin C requirement. Lychees are also a good source of riboflavin, potassium and copper. Lychee trees are beautiful hardwoods that grow 20 to 40 feet tall in a primarily dome shaped habit of growth with dense, evergreen leaves. Lychee trees are popular landscape trees in South Florida and other areas of the southern U.S. and container, atrium or greenhouse growing of lychee trees is becoming popular throughout the rest of he country. Lychee trees are grown commercially in the US for the highly sought after fruit in primarily South and Coastal Central Florida where it is warm and there is some winter chilling, but little or no risk of hard freezes.

 

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