Food Plants International - Plant Fact Sheets Mangifera indica - Mango

Edible Portion: Fruit, Seeds, Nuts, Leaves, Flowers, Vegetable

An erect, branched evergreen tree. It can grow to 10-40 m high and is long lived. (Trees grown by vegetative means are smaller and more compact.) Trees spread to 15 m across. It has strong deep roots. The trunk is thick. The bark is greyish-brown. The leaves are simple and shaped like a spear. Some kinds of mangoes have leaves with a wavy edge. They can be 10-30 cm long and 2-10 cm wide. They are arranged in spirals. The leaf stalk is 1-10 cm long and flattened. Leaves are often brightly coloured and brownish-red when young. These tender leaves which are produced in flushes become stiff and dark-green when mature. The flower stalks are at the ends of branches. They are 10-50 cm long and branching. Up to 6,000 flowers can occur on a stalk. Most of these are male and between 1 and 35 % have both male and female flower parts. Fruit are green, yellow or red and 2.5 to 30 cm long. The fruit hang down on long stalks. The outside layer of the seed is hard and fibrous and there is one seed inside. Several embryos can develop from one seed by asexual reproduction. The fruit shape and colour vary as well as the