280 MANUAL OF TROPICAL AND SUBTROPICAL FRUITS 



the commercial production of guava jelly, the fruit is popular 

 with housewives and is put to several uses. 



The strawberry guava is ordinarily a bushy shrub, but some- 

 times becomes a small tree up to 25 feet high. The bark is 

 smooth, gray-brown in color, and the young branchlets are 



cylindrical (not quadran- 

 gular as in P. Guajava). 

 The leaves are elliptic to 

 obovate in outline, acute, 

 2 to 3 inches long, thick 

 and leathery in texture, 

 somewhat glossy, and deep 

 green in color. The flow- 

 ers, which are produced 

 singly upon axillary ped- 

 uncles, are white, and 

 nearly an inch broad. 

 The calyx is obscurely 

 lobed ; the corolla is com- 

 posed of four orbicular 

 petals. The numerous 

 stamens are clustered at 

 the bases of the calyx lobes. 

 The fruit is obovate to 

 round in form, 1 to If 



FIG. 36. The strawberry guava (Psidium inches in diameter, pur- 



species than the p Hsh re . d in coi r - with a 



thin skin; the soft flesh, 

 which is white toward the center, contains numerous hard 

 seeds. The flavor is sweet and aromatic, suggesting that 

 of the strawberry (whence the common name). It has not 

 the pronounced muskiness of P. Guajava, and for this reason 

 is preferred by some. 

 . The strawberry guava is a native of Brazil, whence it was 



