Chanee announces itself before you see it. Open one in a closed greenhouse and the garlic-and-onion note hangs in the air for an hour, which is exactly
Durian splits a room faster than anything else I grow. I have watched a first-time visitor gag at the smell from across the yard, then watched the friend
Half the fun of durian is the naming, and D15 is a small lesson in how tangled it gets. The fruit most Malaysian stalls sell as D15 is really Chanee, a
Bite into a well-made fried durian ball and the shell shatters over a cold, custard center that most first-timers swear is ice cream. Heat does something
Every durian region has its old workhorses, the clones that built the industry before the celebrity varieties arrived, and D96 is one of them.
If you assumed the S in S17 marks a Sabah durian from Borneo, you have plenty of company, and you are still mistaken. The letter is a grading badge, not
Some durians are named to sell, and D78 is one of them. The trade calls it Sweetie, a name that promises a sugar bomb and sets up a lot of first-timers
The first thing anyone notices about a D158 is the stem. It runs so long, sometimes close to a foot, that the fruit looks like it arrived with a built-in handle.
Most durians you meet are old survivors, wild seedlings or heritage clones that a farmer noticed and kept. D144 is a different animal, a deliberate cross
People ask me this at every farmers market I work, usually right after they smell the durian on my table: could they just grow one in their yard in Florida?