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Main page Introduction Where Cultivation Uses Trade war Plant Recipes Avocado resources Where do you find avocadoAvocado (Persea americana) is a tree and the fruit of that tree, classified in the flowering plant family, Lauraceae. It is native to Central America and Mexico. The tree grows to 20 m (65 ft), with alternately arranged, evergreen leaves, 12-25 cm long. The flowers are inconspicuous, greenish-yellow, 5-10 mm wide. The pear-shaped fruit is botanically a berry or drupe, from 7 to 20 cm long, and weighs between 100-1000 g. It has a large central seed, 3-5 cm in diameter.An average avocado tree produces about 120 avocados annually. Commercial orchards produce an average of 7 tonnes per hectare each year, with some orchards achieving 20 tonnes per hectare (FAO statistics). Biennial bearing can be a problem, with heavy crops in one year being followed by poor yields the next. The fruit is sometimes called an avocado pear or alligator pear, from its shape and green skin. The avocado tree does not tolerate freezing temperatures, and so can be grown only in subtropical and tropical climates. Co-evolution theory Barlow & Martin (2002) identify the avocado as a fruit adapted for ecological relationship with large mammals, now extinct (as for example the South American herbivorous giant ground sloths or the Gomphotheres). This fruit with its mildly toxic pit, co-evolved with those extinct mammals to be swallowed whole and excreted in dung, ready to sprout. The ecological partners have disappeared, and the avocado plant has not had time (or reason) to evolve an alternative seed dispersal technique, aside from human cultivation.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Avocado".
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