Avocado, aka The Testicle Tree

The Aztecs were singularly free of some of the hang-ups that inflict more modern societies. They call a spade a spade. And if avocados dangling from the Persea americana tree in pairs looked like ahuacatl that is what they called them: ‘testicle.’ Such a worldly view hardly endeared them to the priests who followed the Conquistadors. Despite its additional attribute as a shade tree they forbade any to be planted at their monastery gardens.

What these missionaries would have made of some modern fruit doesn’t bear thinking about. In recent years British supermarkets, ever on the lookout for the outrageous, have been offering. First in 2011 Waitrose introduced an ahuacatl the size of a melon from Peru’s Chincha valley with 10 times as much flesh as standard varieties. Then last year along came the ‘Avozilla’ out of South Africa, weighing in at three pounds. What one does with all that guacamole might present something of a problem, even on 14 November – in the United States National Guacamole Day. Not so though for the delectable Halle Berry. The actress appeared in the 2013 release Movie 43 with her most notable assets smothered in the Mexican dip. It was that kind of movie. Before departing to less lustrous considerations guacamole, mashed avocado, tomatoes, chilli peppers and onion, is a Spanish-Mexican word derived from ahuacamolli, an avocado soup or sauce.

---

Botanically Persea americana is a puzzle. It almost certainly originated in what is today southern Mexico and was cultivated from the Rio Grande to central Peru before the arrival of European conquistadors and colonists. All well and good – humans have distributed far and wide, even today beyond the Americas. But what distributed the avocado before that, botanically speaking, very recent time? Recent research suggests it was the megafauna – mammoths, horses, gomphotheres and giant ground sloths – that were responsible. But with their disappearance, the avocado should have gone the way of the dodo. So concludes Connie Connie Barlow, in her fascinating book, The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, And Other Ecological Anachronisms. Once Homo sapiens appeared on the scene Persea’s problem was solved. Indeed thanks to man’s insatiable meddling three forms are now recognized: Guatemalan (Persea nubigena var. guatmalensis), Mexican (P. americana var. drymifolia), and West Indian (P. americana var. americana). All three have been extensively hybridized, yielding a plethora of varieties. The leading contender still remains the venerable ‘Hass.’ Named after its originator Rudolph Hass of California, a postal employee and farmer who discovered it among a shipment of 100 seedlings from Florida almost a century ago, in 1926. It has thick, pebbled copper-purple skin and the pyriform shape that presumably encouraged the British common name of ‘alligator pear.’ Today, it is estimated that 90% of all avocados come from California. Unfortunately, as is all too common a practice with produce from that state it is shipped before fully ripe and so loss much of its exquisite taste and texture. Presumably originating with its Aztec (Nahuatl) name, avocados are widely believed to be aphrodisiacal. The Smithsonian Magazine refers to The Aphrodisiac Encyclopedia, which claims that Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King,’ referred to avocados as la bonne poire (the good pear) because he believed it restored his lagging libido. Be that as it may, for those lacking Viagra nowadays, it might be born in mind additional advice from Smithsonian Magazine: A South American folk recipe for rat poison mixes avocado pit with cheese or lard to kill unwanted rodents.