Sneaky Avocados

This farm started as an avocado grove, so the oldest plants here are squat bushy trees that produce these crazy beautiful green fruits I never ate so quickly from the tree before.

Everyday I make a pass by the tree that is not yet picked . . . a later variety . . . Margie calls it the reserve. And, it does bear the most delicious avocados I have ever eaten. They are huge, very rounded, with shiny smooth leaf-green skins. The flesh is pale, but very good. We have made three batches of guacamole since I arrived, and today's was the best, made with one of these avocados, perfectly ripened.

I looked more closely at this tree today, wondering why the tree produces such big while such hard-to-see fruit. So many trees display fruit when it is ripe in bright yellows, oranges, reds, but not the avocado. As I looked, I discovered so many giant avocados I had not seen before. They are the same color as their leaves, and often tucked behind foliage.

The Carambola (star fruit) tree is also like this. The leaves of the Carambola tree are yellowish-green, and aim their tips to the ground. The fruits are greenish-yellow and shaped in ridges. In the shade of the foliage the fruits look more like just another clump of the surrounding leaves.

Do these species not want to be eaten? So many other plants advertise themselves: raspberries, apples, oranges, etc. Maybe these trees have adapted even further and play on the more subtle tendencies of human nature. We search for the not-so-obvious and the out-of-the-way often enough that perhaps the avocado and the carambola are toying with our complexity.