What you didn’t know about avocados

Within its green exterior, lies a fruit with immense properties and worldwide popularity, but how much do you really know about avocados.

Contrary to popular belief, an avocado is in fact a fruit. The avocado derives from an evergreen tree, which is from the Laurel family of plants, and is the only species of the family that bears fruit. This amazing tree can take four to seven years to produce its first fruit. Avocados begin as small clusters of 200 to 300 yellow-green blossoms that appear before the first seasonal growth, each cluster will produce one to three fruits. But where did they come from?

Avocados originated in south-central Mexico between 7000 BC and 5000 BC. The fruit was unknown to Europeans until 1518, when a Spanish conquistador by the name of Martin Fernandez de Enciso, wrote the first published record describing what the Aztecs called ‘ahuacati’. Between 1532 and 1550, Pedro de Cieza de Leon, a Spanish conquistador and historian, began using the word ‘aguacate’ to describe the fruit in his writings. In 1696, the name avocado, was given by Sir Hans Sloane, a naturalist, in his published catalogue of Jamaican plants. By 1833 the first avocado tree was planted; in Florida by Judge Henry Perrine and in 1856, Thomas J. White introduced the first tree in California. In 1911 Fredrick Popenoe, owner of the West Indian Gardens in Altadena, California sent Carl Schmidt to Mexico to search for an outstanding producing avocado tree. Only one of the trees that was brought back from the trip survived the great freeze in 1913, that tree was named Fuerte. It was from that one tree that California’s avocado industry was created.

Today avocados are grown through out the world; the US, Brazil, Peru, Kenya, South Africa, Israel, Indonesia, Spain, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, just to name a few. It is estimated that there are between 500 and 1000 varieties of avocados, but all are believed to come from three types: Guatemalan, Mexican and West Indian, each type different in its own way. Of those varieties, seven are grown in California, the Hass variety accounting for 95% of the total crop. With 90% of the nations crop, California is the largest producer of domestic avocados. But it’s really what’s in the inside of this intriguing fruit that has people talking.

The yellow green interior also known as the flesh of the avocado consists of 20 vitamins, minerals and plant compounds, which include but are not limited to; vitamins E, C, and B6, folate, niacin, zinc, magnesium, iron, lutein, and beta- sitosterol, a know plant sterol that aids in maintaining healthy cholesterol levels. The avocado’s main purpose in the past has been limited to cooking, but with this nutritional structure it is no wonder why the avocado has turned into a multipurpose fruit. From outer beauty to inner health the possibilities are endless.