Persea americana (avocado)

Japanese name: アボカド
Scientific name: Persea americana

[Overview]
An evergreen shrub or tree 6–25 m tall.
The leaves are simple, spirally alternate, 5–30 cm long and 5–15 cm wide, and vary greatly in shape and size.
The leaf margin is entire, the pinnate veins are conspicuous, and the underside is tinged with gray.
The petiole is 1.5–5 cm.
Panicles emerge from the leaf axils at the branch tips.
The flowers are 1–1.5 cm across with 6 tepals.
The flower stalks and tepals are densely covered with soft yellow-green to pale yellow hairs.
The fruit is elliptic-ovate to pear-shaped, 7–20 cm long; the skin is thick and leathery, and varies from glossy yellowish brown to dark purplish green, from finely dotted to covered with wart-like projections.
The flesh is yellow to yellow-green and edible.
There is a single large, round seed.
There are races such as the Mexican, Guatemalan and West Indian, or hybrids of these, and many cultivars are distinguished.

[History]
A tropical fruit tree cultivated in Central and South America for several hundred years or more. It spread to Spain and other places in the 1600s, and is said to have spread to Asia in the middle of the 19th century.

[Uses]
The flesh contains vitamins A, B and E and potassium, and is so rich in oil and nutrients that it is called the "butter of the forest"; it is eaten raw or used in salads and the like.

[Cultivation]
Propagate from seed or by grafting.
After washing the seed clean, place it with the pointed end up and grow it in a sunny place in the manner of hydroponic bulb culture, and it roots and germinates easily. (Refrigerated storage lowers the germination rate.)
It prefers a sunny, well-drained place.
Being tropical, it is weak in cold; in a warm region it can overwinter outdoors, but it is safer to grow it in a pot.

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