Plant · P-490

Mango

Mangifera indica

Mango is a large evergreen tree that produces the most widely planted fruit of the frost-free tropics - eaten raw or cooked, juiced, or turned into chutney, jam and pickle, with even the unripe fruit pickled and the seed yielding an edible starch and fat. It needs a deep taproot's worth of room, full sun and free-draining soil, and tolerates drought once established, but a dormant tree survives only a brief dip to about -1 C and young growth is damaged at freezing, so any real winter cold rules out growing it outdoors. Where it does crop, the leftover skins, peel and seed kernels are valuable livestock feed, and people sensitive to the sap can develop a poison-ivy-like rash from handling the fruit.