Well, I bought this plant as a package of seeds from my local Dollar General for $4 or $5. I followed the instructions, including thinning the seedlings as they come up until only one remains. I transplanted one of them though to another pot, and that's the one I currently have. The other one died for some reason. So, yes this IS the one grown from seed. I started it well into, I think, February and it's just starting to flower. Yes, this is the one that has golden eggs when mature. I have mine in a pot that I left outdoors during the growing season. Now, the temperature is dropping in my area which is good for my peach tree, blackberries, blueberries and grape vine, but not my wonder eggplant. I brought it indoors and will soon find a place to keep it while the winter drinks and thrives on my hopeless misery(LOL) and then when the growing season returns, I will stick it back outside along with my palms and cycads.

Sounds like rootstock fruit to me. Nectarines are not as vigorous as their peach sisters so I could easily see this happening. Fruit trees are grafted to a different tree which forms the root system. Are your fruit like hard little peaches?

Different varities have different amounts of bananas. My Fhia 17 just finished blooming (the female portion of the flowers) and has 19 hands. Kru only has 4 or 5. Monthan has about 12, but one of mine that lost its roots over our wet winter fell over, and I stood it back up in a hole and staked it, and 3 months later it has 4 pups (part of the never give up approach) and has bloomed but only has 4 hands, because of all the stress it had been through.

Yeah, I'm not sure why it's been growing so slowly. It's been slow and steady though, and may have picked up lately. As of today, I would guess the volume is about half of that of a hen's egg. When it first bloomed, though, I wasn't even sure it was pollinated because it was growing so incredibly slowly. I wouldn't call our climate heat-deprived--were not at all like SF or Oakland/Berkeley. Our average high in the summer is something like 80 or 82 (we don't have a good nearby weather station). Last summer there were 5 periods (1 or more days) when the temperature topped 95 F. Over the time since the 'Frederick' bloomed, temps have been all over the place--60s, 70s and 80s. Today is forecast for 83. Cool compared to Sacramento or Stockton, but not to SF. I'll try to post in a week or two whether my fruit appears to be headed towards standard 'Frederick' size. You got me for a minute on Tecoma stans--I had never heard about it, so I looked it up. At first I worried that for the longest time I had been calling them Tabebuias instead of their correct names! I checked a picture--very similar flowers. But Tabebuias are in fact trees, and Tecoma is a bush. Moreover, they used to be classified in the same genus. So I don't feel as ignorant, but it just reminds me how little I know (especially about trees). The reason the carpenter bees visited our yard so much this year was because I was growing giant pumpkins (they make a LOT of pollen). The giant pumpkins were in the way of where 'Frederick' will go.