Fruits of Labor

Plant a Rare Tropical Fruit Tree With the Rare Fruit Council

If you’ve never seen or heard of soursop before, you wouldn’t be the first. The bright green fruit is covered in spines and has a thick, creamy interior similar to a banana. It’s native to tropical regions in the Caribbean and the Americas but has yet to become popular in South Florida. And that’s where the Rare Fruit Council comes in.

Established in 1955, the Rare Fruit Council International, Inc. (RFCI) aids in the development of tropical fruits in South Florida, with locations in Coral Gables, Broward, and West Palm Beach. This mission is why Maurice Kong, former president and current director of RFCI, joined the organization 21 years ago.

“Having lived in Jamaica most of my adult life, I was very surprised that everyday popular tropical fruits such as guava, sugar apple, soursop, and sapodilla were not a familiar sight at fruit stands or supermarkets in Miami,” says Kong. “What was equally surprising was that these popular fruit trees were also not available for sale at nurseries as well.” When he learned of RFCI, he immediately took the chance to join and reconnected with the fruits he’d loved since childhood.

Left: soursop fruit. Right: sapodilla fruit

RFCI President Steve McNally has a similar story. Like many members, McNally is a Gables resident who first learned of the Rare Fruit Council in 2008 while at the annual farmers’ market at City Hall. He was interested in growing trees in his yard that would provide shade. The club encouraged him to grow “something reciprocal… something that would produce.” He was intrigued.

Since 2020, McNally has acted as president, hosting the Rare Fruit Council’s monthly meetings at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. Often, the meetings include a guest speaker, a plant swap, and a fruit-centric potluck. Members of the Council also go on field trips together to farms and other produce-related places to learn more about the South Florida fruit scene. 

Their most recent trip was to Patch of Heaven Sanctuary, a nonprofit haven for “all sentient beings” in the Redlands, where McNally and others were taken on a five-hour guided tour that included waterfalls, a lagoon, and a chat with a farmer who grows exotic mushrooms. 

McNally’s message to potential new members is simple: join RFCI to learn more about tropical fruit trees and how to grow and sustain them. 

“We all have the same ‘like,’” he says. “We’re a group that all likes to grow stuff in our backyard, and we all want to be more productive. We want to get better with our plants. We have professional growers and hobbyist growers who have been through [the drill of] when to prune or when to fertilize. The experience here is to help people be better at their hobby.”