72 



1916 ANNUAL REPORT 



We generally left these chininis standing as we did the wild cacao 

 the producer of the chocolate bean and also the different sapotas, 

 i:icluding the "Chicle" whose sap is now so profitably hunted to supply 

 the great American craving for chewing gum. The vanilla vine frequently 

 was found clinging to the trees. 



The wild orange too is found here along the streams and bottom 

 lands in the deep alluvial soils. 



The chinini as found in the forest, does not grow to be a large tree. 

 It is usually not over eight or ten inches in diameter and perhaps thirty 

 feet high. The fruit is about the size of a large egg and in shape oval. 

 The quality is only fair. We ate them only when our planted varieties 

 were out of season. This fruit is green in color, and as I recall it now, 

 the skin was of the hard shell type. 



The planted varieties are all seedlings, and so far as I know very 

 little effort has been made to introduce budded varieties of any fruits 

 into Mexico. We had a number of varieties of avocados, each district 

 having something different. In going about the country, whenever I 

 found a particularly fine specimen, I took the seed home for planting. 

 To show how fast avocados grow in the tropics, in four years time from 

 the seed, we had trees six to eight inches in diameter, thirty feet high, 

 and full of fruit. The fruits of this section of Mexico do not grow as 

 large as our largest varieties here. 



Crossing the Sierra Madres to the Pacific slope one enters the dry 

 country, somewhat drier than we have here when irrigation prevails, and 

 still in the lower altitudes we find the avocado fruiting and producing as 

 good a quality if not better than that found in the wet or gulf side^ 

 Here also there is a hot wind from the South, "El Sur", that prevails 

 for a season, very dry and very like our "Northers" here in California. 

 T mention this fact as some of our people have feared that our interior 

 valleys might be too dry and windy to allow the fruits to set. 



I have spoken so far of the avocado as I have known it in the 

 Tierra Caliente or real tropics, where the temperature varies from a 

 minimum of 50 degrees to a maximum of 103, or an average of 76 degrees. 



I feel very sure that these tropical varieties are not adapted to this 

 country, for the same reason the bananna and pine-apple do not mature 

 fruit here. Below the Tropic of Cancer latitude apparently looses its 

 value. Climate is made by elevation and amount of moisture, and 

 climbing the mountains you reach the frost line between 4000 and 5000 

 feet, the dead line of tropical growth, where the fruits mentioned at the 

 beginning of this paper all end, with the exception of the avocado. 

 Here begins the semi-tropics and it includes the great table land of 

 Mexico, the Tierras Templadas, the land of the scrub oak, pine and 

 maguey. This is the region from which all of the California introduc- 

 tions of the avocado have come, a climate very similar to our own 

 and in fact with a rainfall even less. Here I witnessed the first snow 

 which had fallen in fifty years. Mr. Popenoe and others have introduced 

 their varieties from such altitudes as Atlexco 7000 feet, Queretero 6000, 

 Guanajuato 6800 feet, Guadalajara 5400 feet. This section of course 

 is the natural one to explore for suitable plants for California. 



