The lychee, originally from Southern Asia, is a popular and beautiful fruiting tree. The fruits, which hang in clusters or panicles, are delicious. Under the brittle red skin is a translucent juicy fruit with a very sweet flavor. Lychees are best eaten fresh, but are also canned and dried. The dried fruit is called Litchi nut.

Lychee is quite adaptable in its soil requirements but prefers a moist rocky soil. It needs high humidity and abundant rainfall. You can see beautiful fruiting specimens from about sea level in the Hilo area up to about 1,000 feet.

Fertilize regularly with a balanced fertilizer until the tree is fruiting, and mulch the shallow roots with manure as a top dressing. At fruiting age reduce nitrogen to not more than 6 percent in the fertilizer mix. The trees are brittle and should be protected from strong winds. To ensure a strong tree framework, prune it from the beginning to have only one main leader with non-competing branches off the center trunk. It is important to remember that the wider the angle of branching, the stronger the branch.

Lychee flowers in the winter (January and February), and the fruits are ripe between May and July. They tend to be alternate bearers, or sometimes even less frequently. Girdling some branches yearly is an older technique used to induce flowering.

The 'Kaimana,' selected by the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the 'Bosworth-3,' ('B-3' or 'Kwai Mi Pink' from China via Australia) are the two most popular cultivars because of their more consistent bearing habits and high fruit quality. The 'B-3' has an orange or pink-colored skin, and the fruit is smaller and sweeter than the 'Kaimana.' It comes into bearing around July after the 'Kaimana' season is usually through. Other varieties include 'Kwai Mi,' a large fruit with both large and small seeds. 'Groff' is a late-season, small fruit with 'chicken tongue' or undeveloped seed, and 'Brewster,' which is very similar to the 'Kwai Mi' fruit.