'Kent' mango, taste's great taste, has firm flesh and relatively little fiber, but its shelf life is short; all 'Kents' come from a tree in Florida planted in 1933.

Mangoes develop on large, lovely trees, Mangifera indica of the cashew family. It's a species originally from Asia. Mango fruits are super sweet and syrupy.

Because of their syrupiness, inexperienced mango-eaters can get themselves hilariously sticky. Mango skins are thin and leathery, and can be peeled back rather like banana skins, if the skin is first cut with a knife. If the succulent flesh is bitten into, tough fibers stick between the teeth. However, if chunks are sliced from the stone and eaten, the fibers are hardly noticeable.

'Manila' mango, also known as 'Philippine' and 'Carabao' mongo; in 1995 listed as the sweetest of all mangoes, though unripe 'Manilas' are extremely sour and eaten with salt or other condiments; numerous named cultivars have been developed from the 'Manila,' including the Mexican 'Ataúlfo.'

Sometimes mangos are eaten green, with salt. Mango fruits contain single large, flattish, shaggy seeds, which when tossed into the gutters of Mexican towns prove practically indestructible, and end up looking like huge, sun-bleached, shaggy cockroaches.

'Ataúlfo' mango or mango miel (honey mango) known for its curved shape; with yellow to orangish color, it is sweet, juicy, firm and has few fibers; originally it's from Chiapas in southernmost Mexico.

Mangoes mainly are produced along Mexico's Pacific coast, from Nayarit to Chiapas, though on a small scale they grow throughout the moist lowlands. In this area they have a long production season, from February into August. A Mexican government web page dated 2021 states that Mexico is the sixth most important producer of mangoes worldwide.

In Mexico's market's it's possible to find several mango varieties other than those mentioned here, and finding and eating them can be a real pleasure.

'Tommy Atkins' mangoes aren't particularly sweet and their flesh is fibrous but their dark purple to dark red color is attractive to consumers, they ship well and have a long shelf life, so they're produced and exported on a large scale; the cultivar is considered the main commercially exported mango in the Americas; copyright free image courtesy of Asit K. Ghosh made available through Wikimedia Commons.