North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Beckett <thomas@tbeckett.com>]

There is a fruit-lover at the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/24/dining/24MANG.html?8hpib

"The mangosteen — a tropical fruit about the size of a tangerine, whose 
leathery maroon shell surrounds moist, fragrant, snow-white segments of 
ambrosial flesh — can't get a visa. Mangosteens may not legally be 
imported into the United States. They may not legally be shipped to the 
mainland from Hawaii, where a few sturdy souls have lately begun to grow 
them anyway.

"Here in Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, notably Vietnam and 
Singapore, people buy them by the bagful for small change. In Vancouver 
and other Canadian cities with big Asian populations, you can find them 
at street markets and greengrocers. In Paris, Fauchon will sell you one 
for a prince's if not quite a king's ransom.

"But back home in Washington, the best I can do without jumping on a 
plane is the wooden mangosteen, handsomely carved and oiled, that sits 
on my desk there."