Regular mango does grow on our wet side of the island, but it fights an uphill battle against anthracnose, a fungal disease that rots the flowers practically the moment it rains on them. Which, on the Hamakua Coast, is often.
The Basics
Mango, Mangifera indica, is native to South Asia, somewhere around the border of India and Myanmar, where it’s been cultivated for well over four thousand years. It’s a member of the cashew and pistachio family, which surprises most people the first time they hear it.
Origin and Habitat
Mango naturally wants a distinct dry season around flowering time, which is exactly what our wet side does not offer. That single fact drives most of the decisions I make about which varieties are even worth planting here.
What It Looks Like
A dense, long lived evergreen tree that can eventually reach 60 feet or more, with dark, glossy, leathery leaves and long panicles of small flowers that, when things go right, turn into hanging clusters of fruit.
Uses and Flavor
Depends entirely on the variety, but the good ones are exactly what you’d expect, sweet, tropical, a little floral, sometimes with a resinous edge depending on the type. There’s a maprang I’ve got, also called marian plum or plango depending on who you ask, that my friend Adam Crowe shared a seed of a couple years back. There’s a casturi too, fibery but supposedly great tasting, and I’m fine with that trade. And more recently a madu, or honey mango, that came from Joe, said to taste like sweet cane juice, with skin that stays green even when it’s ripe.
Growing It Here
On the wet side, the whole game is picking anthracnose resistant varieties instead of fighting the disease directly. Maprang, casturi, and madu are all resistant enough to actually set fruit here through the rain, which is why those are the ones I keep coming back to. Good airflow, morning sun, and not planting in a low, damp pocket all help too. A lot of the old dooryard mangoes you see planted around Hawaiʻi, common ones like Haden or Pirie, were planted decades ago before anyone was thinking about anthracnose resistance, and you can tell, since their flowers rot most years before the fruit ever has a chance. Grafting onto a resistant variety is really the only reliable fix if you already have one of those older trees and still want fruit out of it.
Pests and Diseases to Watch For
Anthracnose is the headline problem on our side of the island, showing up as dark, sunken lesions on flowers, leaves, and fruit, and it’s a big part of why regular mango struggles here. Mango scab is a similar fungal issue with corky, cracked lesions. On the pest side, the mango weevil, or mango seed weevil, is a federally quarantined pest that’s been established in Hawaiʻi since 1905 and is exactly why Hawaiʻi grown mangoes can’t be shipped fresh to the mainland. Fruit flies are the other big quarantine headache across the whole state.
Kenta’s Take
I love mango a lot, probably more than is reasonable for someone who lives somewhere it’s genuinely hard to grow well. Getting three resistant varieties going at once feels like cheating in a good way.