SB 351 
. C4 H6 
Copy 1 
UNITED STATES 
DEPARTMENT of AGRICULTURE 
DEPARTMENT CIRCULAR 286 
Washington, D. C. September 28, 1923 
THE GHAYOTE: ITS CULTURE AND USES. 
L. G. HOOVER, 
Formerly Assistant Plant Introducer, Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction, 
Bureau of Plant Industry. 
CONTENTS. 
Tage. 
Native home of the chayote_ 1 
Adaptability for cultivation in the 
southern United States_ 1 
Varieties of chayotes_ 3 
Page. 
Cultural directions_ 4 
Uses of the chayote_ 7 
.Recipes_ 9 
Market possibilities- 11 
NATIVE HOME OF THE CHAYOTE. 
The chayote 1 (pronounced chi-d'ti ), a plant immigrant to this 
country from Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies, is of 
ancient cultivation in Central American regions. The perennial- 
rooted vine bears enormous crops of edible fruits (PI. I) and in 
subtropical regions large edible tubers (PI. II). These fruits and 
tubers were among the principal foods of the Aztecs, Mayas, and 
other peoples previous to the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Cen¬ 
tral America, and the vine is to-day one of the principal food plants 
of the inhabitants of these regions (Fig. 1), where it occupies fully as 
important a place horticulturally as does the potato in more northern 
latitudes. 
ADAPTABILITY FOR CULTIVATION IN THE SOUTHERN UNITED 
STATES. 
Recent experimental plantings in our own South and West under 
the direction of the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction of 
the Bureau of Plant Industry have demonstrated that the chayote 
is adapted for culture in the mild-wintered regions of the South 
Atlantic and Gulf Coast States and the southern coastal portions 
of California. Indeed, the vegetable has been grown for more than 
a generation (under the names vegetable pear, mirliton, mango 
squash, etc.) in certain restricted areas of the South, notably the 
1 Cook, O. F. The Chayote: A Tropical Vegetable. Bui. No. 28, Div. of Botany, U. S. 
Dept, of Agr. 1901. (A discussion of the botanical history of the chayote and of its 
commercial utilization in tropical America and other regions of the world where culti¬ 
vated.) 
50894°—23 
Monogra,ph< 
1 
r 
