Summer in Panama means many things are flowering and fruiting. At this time of year we see flowers that we usually don’t see at other times, and I see fruit trees covered with flowers everywhere I go. The bougainvillea are spectacular and I need to spend a day pointing my camera at them very soon.

Mangoes are one of my favorite fruits. If a little dog (perro) is a perrito, is a little mango a mangito? We have mangitoes everywhere so it might be a bumper crop this year. Last year I picked up enough to freeze and enjoy all year, and I plan to do the same this year.

This is one of my favorite trees. The fruit is smaller and yellow, but doesn’t bruise as much as some of the bigger fruit when it falls. This tree is also on a vacant lot and the fruit just rots on the ground, so I feel no guilt for picking it up and bringing it home.

Many baby mangoes! It might be a good year for fruit.

People are remarking on the avocado trees too. They are covered with an unusual amount of flowers so we might have a bumper crop of avocados too. It’s a bit too early to see many fruits but you can already spot an occasional one. They don’t freeze well like many fruits, but frozen avocados can still be used in smoothies and other recipes. If I get a lot I will freeze the extras and experiment.

This is one of my neighbor’s two trees. When she has them she shares, so it might be a good year for avocadoes too.

Can you see the baby fruit right in the middle of the photo?

The start fruit or carambola is flowering and starting to fruit again. It seems like the last round of fruit just slowed down a month or so ago. I like to eat them fresh, and they are great in fruit smoothies. I still have some in the freezer and it looks like when I run out, new fruit will be ready.

You can easily see the two young fruits in this photo

This is harder. The fruits look very much like leaves but if you look closely, maybe you can spot quite a few fruits by looking for the ridge along the sides.

The cashews are very cool! I never realized how they grow until we found them here. There is one nut on each fruit. The nut must be roasted or heated to neutralize the toxins before it can be opened to get the nut inside. No wonder they are so expensive. I wrote a post about them in the past where you can see the fruit, and there is video of people roasting the nuts on an open fire. The fruit has a very unusual,  almost pungent smell and flavor. It is very delicate and doesn’t transport well at all which is why you never see it in the markets. People here use it to make drinks, and it is really good chopped and cooked with maybe a bit of sweetener and/or some vanilla.

Trees are covered with little pinkish flowers now, and a few nuts are just starting to appear.

You can see a green nut in the center of the picture. Eventually the fruit will form from the dark purple stem looking thing, and the nut will turn gray.

Guandu, or pigeon peas are very important to Panamanians. They are pretty much required for holiday dinners for the traditional arroz con guandu (rice and guandu). They can be expensive though, especially around Christmas so they are a very common sight growing in people’s yard. I have found that they freeze well, and they can also be dried and cooked like beans.

My neighbors have a number of beautiful plants covered with flowers and developing pea pods.

My plant with flowers and young pea pods. They are a bit of work picking and shelling the peas, but I like the plants and especially like the flowers. This plant produces black peas and the flowers are beautiful yellow and purple.

Here to finish up are photos of a number of other random plants and trees.

One a coconut gets going, it seems to produce continuously. This one has young green coconuts, small ones to the left, and flowers above just starting to form into little coconuts.

This is not a baby. This is a lemon bigger than a grapefruit. It has a flavor much like the lemons we are used to in the US. I have been freezing the juice so i can have lemonade for a long time.

I have another bunch of plantains coming

We have a guanabana (soursop) tree that produced quite a bit of fruit recently, and now I see a lot more baby fruit so there will be more coming soon.

We also have a bunch of red bananas coming

I still think these flowers and way of fruiting is so interesting

These are mariñon corazon, so called because they look like the cashew apple but the seed is inside like a heart. They are light, white, and somewhat bland raw but cooked, they are very much like apples. If all those bunches of little green things develop into fruit, there is going to be a lot of it!

Our limon tree has a few baby fruits

This almond tree is also flowering

I spotted just a few almonds but I’m sure there will be more soon from all the flowers

A few notes on the fruits above. The huge lemons are great! I have been picking them up from two trees nearby. I wrote about them in the past.

The mariñon corazon, I can’t find any information about them. The people in Nicaragua call them peras, but that didn’t lead anywhere either. The trees are tall, nicely shaped, and when they flower they make feathery purple blossoms. Soon there is a beautiful carpet of purple under the tree.

Our limon trees are usually loaded with fruit by now, but we had a brush fire come through here last year. The heat from the fire even outside our fence was enough to cause the trees to lose all their leaves. They have recovered nicely but there were very few flowers, so we have very little fruit this year. Hopefully we will have better luck next year.