A 100-year-old tree stands in a Miami yard. Is it the ‘granddady of all Florida mangoes?”

My obsession started like so many obsessions do, with a question so sticky, so delicious, it was impossible to ignore: Is the tree that gave rise to the entire mango industry in the western hemisphere still alive more than 110 years later in a Coconut Grove yard? This wouldn’t be just any mango tree; this tree is the first of its kind, “the granddaddy of all Florida mangoes,” as one person later told me. It was the result of the first time anyone in America had successfully crossed two species of unremarkable mangoes and luckily — improbably, revolutionarily — created a mango that made people swoon. It was the first to ripen to a rosy blush, with a tropical piney scent. It was the first mango you could bite into without getting a mouthful of mango dental floss, and it was hearty enough to be shipped commercially all over the world. Yet it was so perfectly adapted to our ground, temperature and weather that many South Floridians unknowingly have grown up with this mango in our backyards. It was a mango so good that 100 years ago, Florida horticulturalists — looking for a new fruit to grow here — would make this mango their ambassador to the world. Spicy, flashy, easy to fall in love with at first sight (or first bite): You might call it the most Miami mango ever. And all of it came from a single tree.