Mangosteen
Garcinia mangostana
Unforgiving about warmth and damp — 18°C at the least, humid air, and soil never allowed to dry.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Purple and violet
- Sunlight
- Dappled shade suits it better than open sun; keep the light bright but indirect.
- Watering
- Never let it dry out — consistently moist, without exception.
- Feeding
- A balanced feed monthly while it is in growth.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- April
- Pruning
- Almost nothing to prune; dead branches and no more.
- Overwintering
- Heated glass above 18°C with the humidity kept high — both are essential.
- Apr–May Flowering
- May–Aug Fruit Set
- Aug–Dec Harvest
- Jan–Apr Harvest
- Plant spacing
- 36 ft 1 in
- In-row spacing
- 36 ft 1 in
- Between rows
- 39 ft 4 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, shallow and far-reaching
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 4 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 26–39 ft across, about 2–3× the width of the plant
Almost all of a tree’s roots are in the top two feet of soil, where the air is, and they run out well past the branch tips. The deep taproot most people picture belongs to the seedling; the tree grows out of it and spends the rest of its life spreading sideways instead.
The roots have no root hairs and almost no ability to repair damage, so a mangosteen transplants very badly and takes years to recover from any disturbance. It is planted from a deep pot, once.
The habit is Mangosteen’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Mealybugs Mealybug showing as white cottony masses
- Scale insects Scale insects raising bumps on the stems, sticky honeydew below
- Spider mites Red spider mite where the air runs dry, marked by fine webbing
- Leaf spot Leaf spot, brown with a yellow halo around each mark
- Root & crown rot Root rot from waterlogging — yellowing, then collapse
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Hoverfly Syrphidae
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Big-eyed bug Geocoris spp.Hunts Spider mites
A stubby 3 mm bug with enormous wrap-around eyes, working the soil surface and the low foliage for aphids, mites, thrips and insect eggs. It is the main natural check on chinch bugs in a lawn and it is killed outright by insecticide.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.Hunts Spider mites
A pinhead-sized true bug that is the best natural check on thrips, and happily spears aphids, mites, and insect eggs too. It needs pollen when prey is scarce, so keep something flowering nearby.
- Predatory mites Phytoseiulus & AmblyseiusHunts Spider mites
Fast orange mites that hunt spider mites egg-by-egg, and cousins that clear thrips and fungus-gnat larvae. Sold as a biological control for greenhouses; outdoors they follow humidity — mist and mulch, don’t dust with sulfur.
- Rove beetle StaphylinidaeHunts Spider mites
Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.
Green-leaved fruit, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com