Avocado

Avocadoes grow on trees. , long thought to have originated in South Central Mexico. Commonly, the fruit of the plant is also called an avocado (also alligator pear), which is botanically a large berry containing a single large seed known as a pit or a stone. The tree grows to 66 feet with alternately arranged leaves 4.7 to 9.8 inches long. The flowers are inconspicuous, greenish-yellow, 0.2 to 0.4 inches wide. Thepear-shaped fruit is 72.8 to 7.9 inches long, weighs between 3.5 and 35.3 oz, and has a large central seed, 2.0 to 2.5 inches long.

Botanically, the avocado fruit is a single-seeded berry, due to the imperceptible endocarp covering the seed, rather than a drupe.

Over 200 varieties of avocado trees grow in Hawai‘i, the result of three centuries of traders who ate avocados on their westbound passage from Mexico and Central America, saving the seeds of the ones they liked. Those seedlings flourished here, and local farmers—many of them Japanese coffee planters—grafted and cultivated the best varieties. Even today many of the local avocados carry the Japanese names of Kona coffee growers: Nishikawa, Yamagata, Ohata. Hawai'i has all three races of avocados: West Indians, like the Malama, with smooth skin and large fruit; Guatemalans with hard, pebbly skin, like the Hawaiian Hass; and thin-skinned Mexicans, like the Linda. That diversity includes varieties that grow at different altitudes and microclimates and trees that fruit at different times of the year. In theory, Hawai‘i growers can produce avocados year-round.

Traditional Cultural and Medicinal Usages

• Fruit is a good source of good fats to lower cholesterol and potassium
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