China, India, Southeast Asia, and South Africa are among the major producer countries. The trees make beautiful landscape specimens with their dark green leaves and bright red fruit. The plant is a dense, symmetrical, oval evergreen tree with a dark brown, short, thick, trunk. Lychee trees can live for many years. It will grow nearly anywhere citrus will grow, but young plants are extremely sensitive to cold and require frost protection.
Mature trees can tolerate a few degrees of frost.
Orchards are usually planted at a much higher density and later thinned. The inflorescence is determinant. Each phase of bloom consists of flowers of the same type. Anther dehiscence occurs on day 2-5 and continues more or less throughout the day and night, but reaches its zenith around 10 a.m. The duration of flowering on a given tree is 20-45 days.