Mango Mayhem

Anyone with a tree in their yard finds themselves with friends they didn’t know existed

Rajendra Biswal on Unsplaash...

It happens every year during mango season in South Florida--sometime between June and July—mango lovers go to war.

There’s a good reason.   Florida mangoes are so delicious they’re addictive.  My former father-in-law used to send me and my ex-husband a box from his tree every summer.  Huge, green, hard-as-rock mangoes would arrive and turn into soft reddish- yellow fruits, dripping with sweetness. Friends would beg for those mangos.  I had been yearning for them ever since my marriage died.

I thought moving to Florida would mean I could actually buy those mangoes and eat as many as I wanted.

  No such luck.

When I started looking to buy Florida mangoes, I discovered the sorry truth that they’re simply not for sale. Even in Florida mango season, mangoes sold in Florida supermarkets are from Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala or other South American countries.  These are mediocre at best.  I have eaten delicious mangoes while IN Mexico but those are not the mangoes that wind up on the shelves at Publix or Walmart.   

I even Googled why this was with no results, until I stumbled upon a news story recently that explained the Florida mango mystery.   Once upon a time there WAS a Florida mango industry but Hurricane Andrew in the 90s destroyed most of the trees and it became cheaper to import mangoes.  Which is also why it’s so hard to find Florida oranges in Florida—something about orange blight, not to speak of local produce—but I digress. 

Except for a few farm store exceptions, Florida mangoes are only available from homeowners who happen to have a mango tree in their yard.

Mango season pits neighbor against neighbor, friends against friends, and thieves against honest folk.  Anyone with a tree in their yard finds themselves with friends they didn’t know existed who want a few.

This year I got lucky.   Mary Ann, my home health aide, who has a tree, gave me a bunch and I could not stop eating them.  Literally.  I spent the next day in the bathroom.  They are better than prunes that way.

She also brought tales of the lengths people go to poach her mangoes.   She actually found someone climbing her mango tree in broad daylight to pick them.  A truck driver came by at 4 am to collect the fallen ones from her lawn, figuring she’d be asleep. She wasn’t and chased him off.    She’s even had people come by with a mango picking pole to brazenly pluck them off her tree at all hours.

  Chasing trespassers from their yards during mango season is a blood sport for many mango tree owners.  Florida is a stand-your-ground state.  If you are trying to steal the mangoes on someone’s ground you may get one right in the face.  When unripe, mangoes make formidable projectiles.

Some generous tree owners try to avoid trespassers by giving their excess mangoes away. A neighbor of Mary Ann put out a basket with free mangoes, but someone stole not only the mangoes but the basket.      

“Why don’t they just ask me,” Mary Ann complained to me.  “I’d happily give them away.  I can’t eat them all.’   

“Excuse me,” I said, “would you really open your door to someone you don’t know?  This is Florida after all.”

This would not happen in polite Woodstock, NY where I used to live.  I had an apple tree with the best golden delicious apples you ever tasted.  Friends would ask for a few which I gladly parted with but no one ever attempted to steal them.

Sometimes there are trees on land where ownership is unclear.    My local NextDoor.com site had a long screed by a Century Village resident who reported the fate of a neighbor who tried to pick mangoes from a tree in front of an apartment building that he didn’t live in.     “… the hostile president ran out cursing at the neighbor picking the fruit. Maybe rightfully so. This guy claims to have planted the trees 15 years ago. There are dozens of ripe mangoes on the tree ready for picking. So with this in mind, I'm asking for your opinions.  It’s on common area for that building. Do you have the right to go there to pick?”    

This post got almost a hundred responses—many very heated.   The consensus was that the common area belonged to the building but since it was illegal to have a fruit tree in the first place in Century Village because they attract rodents or something like that no one should be picking those mangoes.

 It’s ironic that larceny abounds in Florida and so do homeowner’s associations rules.   The more rules, the more rule-breakers.

Unfortunately Mary Ann’s tree was an early bloomer and she’s now out of mangoes— which left me bereft.    Lacking the nerve to trespass on someone’s property, I just bought a couple at my local farm store for a buck each.   They’re rock hard and I hope they will ripen to delicious sweetness.

  I’m still slavering for more Florida mangoes.