THE NATIVE HOME OF THE 

 CHERIMOYA 



Wilson Popenoe 

 Agricultural Explorer, U. S. Department of Agriculture 



Ci^TT^HE pineapple, the mangosteen, 

 Jl and the cherimoya," wrote the 

 botanist Berthold Seemann, 

 "are considered the finest fruits in the 

 world. I have tasted them in those 

 localities in which they are supposed to 

 attain their highest perfection — the 

 pineapple in Guayaquil, the mango- 

 steen in the Indian Archipelago, and the 

 cherimoya on the slopes of the Andes — 

 and if I were called upon to act the part 

 of a Paris I would without hesitation 

 assign the apple to the cherimoya. Its 

 taste, indeed, surpasses that of every 

 other fruit, and Haenke was quite right 

 when he called it the masterpiece of 

 Nature." 



This superb fruit {Annona cherimola), 

 well known and highly appreciated 

 from Mexico to Chile and Argentina, as 

 well as in a few regions of the Old World, 

 has received, in recent years, the atten- 

 tion of North American horticulturists. 

 The climate of southern Florida has 

 proved too tropical for the production 

 of good fruit (for the tree, though a 

 native of the tropics, grows in those 

 regions only at considerable elevations, 

 where the climate is much cooler than 

 on the seacoast) ; but in southern Cali- 

 fornia excellent cherimoyas have been 

 grown, and it is likely that in future 

 years fruits produced there will make 

 their appearance in the markets of the 

 eastern United States. 



A NATIVE OF ECUADOR AND PERU 



The abundance of cherimoya trees in 

 many countries of tropical America 

 has made it somewhat difficult to fix 

 with certainty the native home of the 

 species. The plant often escapes from 

 cultivation and sometimes (as in parts 

 of Mexico and Guatemala) becomes so 

 thoroughly naturalized as to deceive 

 local botanists into considering it indig- 

 enous. The principal cause of the 

 uncertainty which has always existed 



'"Ecuador," published at Leipsig in 1892. 



regarding this subject, however, may 

 be sought in the circumstance that the 

 region generally considered by the best 

 authorities as the native home of the 

 species has been visited by very few 

 botanists. Alphonse DeCandolle, in 

 preparing his classical work, the "Ori- 

 gin of Cultivated Plants," was unable 

 for this reason to say more than the 

 following: "I consider it most probable 

 that the species is indigenous in Ecua- 

 dor, and perhaps also in the neighbor- 

 ing part of Peru." A botanical speci- 

 men obtained in Ecuador by the late 

 Edouard Andre helped him to reach 

 this conclusion. "Andre gathered," he 

 says, "in a valley in the southwest of 

 Ecuador, specimens which certainly 

 belong to the species as far as it can be 

 asserted without seeing the fruit. He 

 says nothing as to its wild nature, but 

 the care with which he points out in 

 other cases plants cultivated or perhaps 

 escaped from cultivation, leads me to 

 think that he regards these specimens 

 as wild." 



More recently, W. E. Safford of the 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture has 

 re-sifted all the available evidence, and 

 has written that "DeCandolle is in all 

 probability correct in attributing it to 

 the mountains of Ecuador and Peru. 

 The common name which it bears 

 even in Mexico is of Quichua origin 

 . . . and terra-cotta vases modeled 

 from cherimoya fruits have been dug 

 up repeatedly from prehistoric graves 

 in Peru." 



While working in Ecuador in 1921, I 

 came upon the following passage in 

 Theodor Wolf's excellent work' on that 

 country: "In the mountains of Loja 

 Province— for example, between Loja 

 and Malacatos, at an elevation of 1,800 

 to 2,000 meters — I have seen the cheri- 

 moya, in a wild state, forming small 

 groves." 



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