340 MANUAL OF TROPICAL AND SUBTROPICAL FRUITS 



unusually choice or valuable should be propagated by budding, 

 grafting, or layering, and established as named varieties. 

 Occasionally a seedless kind is found, or one whose fruits are 

 very large, weighing a pound or even more. Differences in 

 flavor and quality of fruit are also noticeable. There are not 

 as yet any named varieties known in the trade. 



THE SAPOTE (Fig. 44) 

 (Calocarpum mammosum, Pierre) 



The sapote is one of the important fruits of the Central 

 American lowlands. It furnishes to the Indians a nourishing 

 and agreeable food, obtainable during a certain part of the year 



in considerable abundance. 

 Cook and Collins remark : " It 

 was this fruit that kept Cortes 

 and his army alive on their 

 famous march from Mexico City 

 to Honduras." 



In the hot and humid low- 

 lands the sapote becomes a large 



tree often 65 feet hi g h . with a 

 thick trunk and stout branches. 



The Indians, when clearing the forest in order to plant coffee 

 or other crops, usually spare the sapote trees they encounter, 

 for they regard the fruit highly. The foliage is abundant, and 

 light green in color. The leaves, which are clustered toward the 

 ends of the stout branchlets, are obovate to oblanceolate in 

 outline, broadest toward the apex, and 4 to 10 inches long. 

 The small flowers are produced in great numbers along the 

 branchlets. The sepals are eight to ten, imbricate, in several 

 series; the corolla is tubular, whitish, with five lobes. The 

 stamens are five and the ovary is hairy, five-celled, with one 

 ovule in each cell. The fruit is elliptic or oval in form, com- 



