{"id":77,"date":"2009-08-03T17:40:06","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T00:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quantum-immortal.net\/blog\/2009\/08\/03\/monday-magnoliophyte-avocado\/"},"modified":"2009-08-03T17:40:06","modified_gmt":"2009-08-04T00:40:06","slug":"monday-magnoliophyte-avocado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quantum-immortal.net\/blog\/2009\/08\/03\/monday-magnoliophyte-avocado\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Magnoliophyte: Avocado"},"content":{"rendered":"

Avocados are Magnoliids belonging to the Laurel family, Lauraceae. The leaves are like those of most Lauraceaens, simple and lanceolate (like Bay leaves), and the plant grows as a medium to tall tree (up to 70 ft). The plants are most well known for their fruit, a leathery-skinned berry with a pasty edible pericarp and hardened pit. The fruit is a true berry, and not a drupe, as the entire ovary wall ripens into the edible pericarp, whereas in a drupe, the ovary wall forms the outermost layer of the pit. The genus Persea<\/em> has its origin in West Africa during the Paleocene, from whence it spread to Asia, South America, Europe, and North America. As Africa, western Asia, and the Mediterranean dried out in the middle of the Tertiary Period, and after the glaciation of Europe and Northern America in the Pleistocene, the genus went extinct in those regions, resulting in its current distribution. It is thought that avocados may be evolutionary “ghosts”, in that the fruit seems adapted for now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna like Giant Ground Sloths or Gomphotheres. The large mammals would swallow the fruit whole and excrete the toxic pit in their dung, ready for sprouting. No extant animals are large enough to do this, and it’s thought that avocados would have gone extinct or evolved a different fruit morphology were it not for human cultivation.<\/p>\n

\"Avocado\"
\n\"Avocado\"
\nMagnoliidae; Laurales; Lauraceae; Persea americana<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

As for human cultivation, the plant has been grown in Central America since at least 900 CE, and likely much earlier. The name is derived from the Nahuatl word ahuacatl<\/em>, meaning testicle, referring to the shape of the fruit. The Nahuatl word ahuacamolli<\/em>, meaning “avocado soup”, is the source of the Mexican Spanish word “guacamole”. The fruits have had a long-standing stigma as sexual stimulants, and were known by the Aztecs as “the fertility fruit”. Europeans at first avoided them to maintain the image of chastity, but by the mid-1500’s, it became a popular crop. In the 19th century, it was introduced from Mexico into California, and avocado cultivation became a very successful business. 95% of US avocados come from California, with 60% from San Diego county, the most common cultivar being the Hass variety. It is interesting to note that as tasty and healthy they can be for humans (rich in vitamins B, E, and K, have more potassium than bananas, highest fiber content of any fruit, contain many healthy oils and fats), the fruit can be irritating or deadly to many other animals. There is evidence that cats, dogs, cattle, goats, rabbits, rats, birds, fish and horses can be harmed or killed by eating parts of the avocado plant. The toxicity is derived from persin, a poisonous fatty acid that has been recently isolated as a fungicide. It has also been shown to kill breast cancer cells. It seems like avocados are really useful for humans, and really bad for basically everything else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Avocados are Magnoliids belonging to the Laurel family, Lauraceae. The leaves are like those of most Lauraceaens, simple and lanceolate (like Bay leaves), and the plant grows as a medium to tall tree (up to 70 ft). The plants are most well known for their fruit, a leathery-skinned berry with a pasty edible pericarp and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum-immortal.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum-immortal.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum-immortal.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum-immortal.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum-immortal.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quantum-immortal.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum-immortal.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum-immortal.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum-immortal.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}