Florigon

Florigon was the result of a home hybridization project by John Kaiser of Ft. Lauderdale, FL , who was once the police chief there. Kaiser planted different seeds of Saigon mangos and selected one that likely had Haden as pollinating parent which fruited in 1936. He named this seedling the "Florigon", a combination of the words "Florida" and "Saigon".  The variety received a minor amount of attentiion via the Florida mango forum and even received some commercial plantings in the 1950s before being largely forgotten until being revived again in the 1990s as a backyard tree.

The fruit are small-to-medium sized, typically under a pound in weight, are yellow and ovate in shape, with a yellow soft and fiberless flesh that has a mild-sweet  Indochinese hybrid-type flavor. Heavy rainfall can wash out Florigon's flavor, but during dry weather they are pleasant tasting fruit. The seed is large and polyembryonic, and the flesh to seed ration isn't great compared to other mangos.

 

The trees are medium vigorous growers with open canopies and somewhat vertical growth habit. They have *outstanding* anthracnose resistance, and routinely fruited for us under heavy disease pressure in Loxahatchee Groves even when they were not sprayed. Florigon is also very resistant to mango bactgerial black spot and rot fungi. Due to its exceptional disease resistant, it is a variety to consider growing in very marginal, humid interior areas of Florida and wet parts of Hawaii.

 

The trees are good producers as well. They are moderately vigorous growers with spreading, very open canopy. Florigon is an early-season mango and typically ripens from May through June.