No Mai Tsze

'No Mai Tsze' - written variously No Mai Chee, No Mi Ci and Nuomici, and translating roughly as glutinous rice ball - is widely regarded as the finest-eating lychee in China. It is concentrated around Guangzhou, Dongguan and Zengcheng, arrives late in the Chinese season, and routinely fetches three to four times the price of ordinary cultivars. The quality comes from a combination rarely found together: firm, smooth, intensely fragrant flesh and a very high proportion of shrivelled chicken-tongue seeds, giving flesh recovery of 75-85 percent. Its weakness is equally famous - it is a notoriously shy and erratic bearer, and it has not performed in Hawaii. Pine Island Nursery rates its fruit quality excellent but its crop consistency poor, and UF/IFAS marks it as only marginally suitable for Florida dooryards.