Thread: Thank you Farmer Lott from the 1880s ... the Mangoes this year are great!

Hello All,
I just bought and savoured a Honey Gold Mango this afternoon. I wondered if it was a variety of the 'Bowen' Mango. After some digging on the internet I found out that yes, this is the case. The Honey Gold Mango, that Piñata Farms holds the plant variety rights to first appeared in Rockhampton, Queensland. The Honey Gold mango was a naturally occurring cross pollination of a Kensington Pride off-type pollinated by an unknown variety found in 1991 (accessed 15/12/23 from, Honey Gold mangoes - Our Fruit - Pinata Farms).

Here is where Farmer Lott comes into the picture and all homage due... The Kensington Pride mango is another name of the Bowen mango. In the 1880s a Bowen local farmer, Mr. Harry Lott, isolated a good fibreless flesh mango among various mango seeds. He cultivated it on his farm, ‘Kensington,’ circa 1880, from whence it spread to other regions known as Kensington Pride (accessed 15/12/23 from, Are Kensington Pride and Bowen Mangoes the Same?).

I would also like to thank the cast of insect species: including bees, flies, beetles, moths and butterflies that pollinate the mangoes.

When I first moved to Bundaberg in the early 1990s there were some very old mango trees growing around my place. The fruit of these mangoes were the turpentine variety. I never managed to acquire the taste for them. The old turpentine mangoes were like the older variety of persimmons - get them at the exact time of ripeness and they were absolutely wonderful. Either side of that exact moment of great flavour and their astringency would latch onto your tongue like Velcro and then the taste would cast your tongue into the dirt.

So thank you Farmer Lott, and the very perceptive bloke from Rockhampton - plus the insects, your efforts have not been wasted! Yum - Yum!

Kind regards
Lionel

Feckin love mangoes, when I did my African safari we came across wild mangoes in Malawi and gorged myself on them, I think the weed we had might have helped .