Nam Doc Mai Mango

June 2026 Produce Parable

By Adam Calder, Wheatsfield Produce Manager

Summer is upon us, and that means it is the time for tropical fruit! Making a return appearance in our produce department is a real star, the Nam Doc Mai mango.

It is difficult to articulate just how good these mangoes are. The Produce Department Assistant Manager, Devin, said “they taste like what people always say good tropical fruit eaten in its setting tastes like.” That is a succinct way of saying these mangoes taste like a tropical sunset, with your feet in the sand at a beach, after a day of swimming in the ocean. If such things could have a flavor, they would taste like the Nam Doc Mai mango. Our Center Store Manager, Jane, said she and her children bonded over their surprise and delight in the sublime taste of this wonderful fruit.

The lemon-yellow flesh is succulent, sweet and syrupy in a most decadent way. The fruit itself has a unique, pointed shape with a greenish-yellow to gold-colored peel. These mangos also have a pleasant, heady scent that matches the sweetness of the fruit’s flavor. They originated in Thailand, and are the key ingredient in the delicious Thai Mango Sticky Rice dessert. Once confined only to Thailand, they are now grown in tropical and sub-tropical locations all over the world.

The plant itself has an interesting property, in that the seed exhibits polyembryony, which means the seed contains more than one embryo. In most circumstances, when a plant forms a seed there is one embryo in it, with a genetic composition unique compared to that of the parent plant. In polyembryony, there is more than one embryo in the seed. These embryo “siblings” have identical genes to one another, but different genes than the parent plant. The same thing happens in humans when identical twins are born from one initial embryo.

The season on these delicacies is only from June through July, so grab some the next time you are in the co-op if you want a tropical treat in the middle of our land-locked ocean of corn and soy.