One of the best of all fruits is the cherimoya. Relatively little known in the USA, it is a super-sweet custardy fruit that originates in high Andean valleys. It just so happens that the coastal belt, slightly inland, extending from Santa Barbara to north San Diego County has a climate that is nearly identical in terms of temperature swings and humidity to the tropical, but high-elevation, homeland of these fruits. Good news for us–they grow great here!
The photo below shows a very large fruit on our tree of the ‘Helmuts’ variety (one that I have never tasted). There is a much smaller fruit just up the branch.
One of the other trees offers a far less pleasant sight. This tree–a seedling, that is, not a named variety–is laden with fruit, but the fruit has gotten covered with mealybug (or some similar pest).
It will take some spraying of water to dislodge the pests and then a wrapping of the trunk with tanglefoot (a sticky substance applied to a band of tape around the trunk) to keep the ants out. As with many sucking insects in fruit trees, ants maintain colonies of these insects in trees to provide honeydew for their own consumption. These pests can scar fruit, but if removed, the fruit itself usually turns out OK. That is, not saleable, but edible.
A cherimoya booster in New Zealand has an excellent site about the fruit. See also the California Cherimoya Association.
I used to buy fantastic cherimoya popsicles on the street in Chile. Can’t get anything like it in the US.
Seed planted by boz — 16 November 2006 @ 18:14
I know them as chirimoya … and they’re AMAZING. They make the best milkshakes. I used to get them regularly at the markets in La Paz, Bolivia.
Seed planted by Miguel Centellas — 16 November 2006 @ 20:03
The California Rare Fruit Growers link in the first sentence indicates that “chirimoya” is an alternate name. However, I have never heard or seen that, and the CRFG indicates that “cherimoya” is used in the US and Latin America. Apparently, that is not entirely accurate! It also says that another alternate is “chirimolla” and that in the UK and Commonwealth it is known as “custard apple.”
By any name, they are indeed spectacularly rich and sweet.
Seed planted by MSS — 17 November 2006 @ 09:34
How lucky you are to have them here in the US. I discovered them in the Ecuadorean Andes last spring and wondered why there is no import/export market of these beauties. Then, alas, I found a small overpriced ($5 apiece!) variety at the local Harris Teeter grocer here in North Carolina–I’ll hold out for the plump variety from the plump indian roadside vendors on the Pan American heading north out of Quito.
Seed planted by Tom — 22 November 2006 @ 06:31