Imbe The fruit is good if you leave it long enough on the tree. Simply picking after it turns yellow is not good enough. The fruits need to be more orange coloured and this takes some patience. Ref: Peter Kring
Luc Vleeracker: My single plant once produced lots of fruit, that was when I bought it (in flower and surrounded by a lot more Imbes). Since then had only one or two fruits all the rest aborted (hundreds and hundreds 5 mm fruits.
Oscar Jaitt: That might be why your lone Imbe produces very acid fruits. You are only getting fruit from occasional hermaphrodite flowers. Usually the fruits are formed through cross pollination, male and female. Not sure if that affects taste, just my guess. Here’s a third, and still different description, somewhere in between the other two: sweet with a bit of tartness. It’s pleasant, but not to die for. I find it has a bit of a strange aftertaste. I have 3 trees about 4 mtrs tall, 2 males and a female. They were extremely slow growing at first, grow a bit faster after about 1¼ mtrs tall. I planted them in the worst part of my land, 100% pure lava rock, and they still grew fine although they tend to fall over very easily so I had to stake them. Very strange looking shaped plant. Also strange that they can handle high rainfall as they come from very dry areas. How to get them to grow faster: either build a time machine, or work on having extreme patience! Fertilizing regularly would of course also help. http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11879&page=291
Jaime: The Imbe I’ve had has not been acid, just a very good, sweet flavour.
Adam Shafran: Fruits vary in flavour; there are even selected varieties in Africa…some are quite sweet…good thing I’ve got a nice diverse batch of plants about to fruit soon!! My lone fruiting specimen as of now, produced a very nice acid/sweet fruit…only problem, very small amount of tasty flesh, big seeds…oh well…fresh garcinia fruit in Florida is a rarity at least Central Florida and it will fetch a high dollar per fruit. In the literature I have read Imbe has been improperly described as male / female only, sometimes but Lorenzi got it right in his book, Brazilian Fruits, they are either male, or androgynous/female…presence of both helps set more fruits but Imbe, Mammea, and Cherapu are all plants with different habits and histories. Don’t think you can make assumptions based on those relatives… if there was a plant capable of producing fruit by itself, it would be cloned and popularized. Also knowing Zill, he probably had a worker who knew very well that grafting branches of male and female would make all five trees fruit and wouldn’t be surprised (being Zill is most likely adept at grafting or employs a bunch of workers who are as well)…it is common knowledge that this has been practiced by many growers.