Feijoa Fever

Image from Wikipedia

If you’re lucky enough to live where you can grow it, pineapple guava (Acca sellowiana) is a beautiful tree. Evergreen, the leaves are dark green on top and silvery gray on the bottom. In the spring you get hundreds of pink and red, edible flowers (they actually taste like cotton candy). In the fall you get copious amounts of green fruit, high in pectin and sugar.  When I’ve seen pineapple guavas in our local supermarket they are priced at nearly $2 a piece. I planted one a few years ago in our front yard.

Image from Wikipedia

Last Thursday morning at the at the National Heirloom Exposition Mark Albert, a pineapple guava expert, gave a lecture on “Developments in Pineapple Guava.” Those developments are, interestingly, entirely in the hands of amateur growers like Albert. Pineapple guavas are not part of any government breeding program. And the tree has really only been domesticated in the last 100 years or so. There’s a confusing jumble of named varieties and considerable disagreement on how you even propagate them. During his lecture, Albert dropped a bunch of factoids of interest to pineapple guava obsessed fruit geeks such as me:

  • First, how to pronounce the Portuguese name for the fruit: feijoa – fay–ee–joe–ah
  • Don’t pick from the tree–wait for it to fall to the ground.
  • Pineapple guava is very drought tolerant but needs summer water if you want fruit.
  • Albert’s prefers to propagate from seed.
  • Pineapple guava’s origins are in Uruguay. The region it comes from sometimes does not receive any rain in three years. It’s also the climax species in this arid region.
  • The Spanish name for pineapple guava is Guayabo del país or wild guava. 
  • Albert, who lives in Mendocino County in Northern California (about as far north as you can grow this tree) propagates the seeds by soaking pulp in water for a few months and planting the seeds when it warms up in the springtime.   

If you live where it never gets below 15ºF, consider giving this gorgeous tree a place in your garden.

More info from the California Rare Fruit Growers on pineapple guava here

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8 Comments

  1. I’m in Texas and it gets at 15 degrees maybe once a year. Or once every two years. So I guess that one time would probably kill the tree. Which is sad… they look yummy and I need a new tree for my side yard.

  2. Do you know if you can successfully grow this in a large pot, bringing it indoors in the winter, but keeping it by a very sunny door and radiator? I live in Bavaria…but I want cotton candy flowers!!! D:

  3. I started several Feijoa’s from seed about 5 years ago (online nursery had them). I live in Massachusetts, and the plants grow happily in large pots that I bring inside once temps drop to the upper twenties at night. I’m hoping to get flowers for the first time next year, and I’m looking more into trying to meet their flowering requirements. Good luck!

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