litchix?

[Frank van de Loo]

bae at oci.utoronto.ca (Beverly Erlebacher) wrote:
>
>li-tchi or li-chee or ly-chee n. 1. A Chinese tree, Litchi chinensis,  
>  bearing edible fruit. 2. Also litchi nut.  The fruit of the litchi tree.[
>  Chin. (Mandarin) li {4}zhi {1}]
>
>Sorry, I don't know the family.  They are in season in summer.  You can
>also buy them canned.  I think they need frost free or nearly frost free
>conditions.  They are not strawberry-like in any fruit character unless
>your eyesight is bad or you have a lot of imagination!
>
My previous post probably uninformative (drat that attachment thing).
I searched the Tropicos database of the Missouri Botanical Garden:
http://keck.tamu.edu/cgi/MG/wwwRMG.mobot.html
for Litchi, and got:
fam. SAPINDACEAE, Soapberry family

Cheers,
Frank van de Loo.