56 Fun Facts About Avocado

The avocado has one big seed like a peach, but botanists class its fruit as what?

A berry, in the botanist's sense: a fleshy fruit with no stony shell around the seed, which is what a peach or cherry has. A few texts still file the avocado with those stone fruits, because the dividing line is not sharp.

The avocado tree belongs to the same plant family as which two kitchen staples?

Cinnamon and bay laurel share the laurel family with the avocado, and the kinship has a cost. Laurel wilt, a beetle-borne fungus that has killed wild redbay laurels across the American South, now threatens Florida's avocado groves too.

Which classic American salad, born at Hollywood's Brown Derby restaurant, counts avocado among its standard ingredients?

Cobb salad is named for Robert Cobb, who ran the Brown Derby. As the story goes, he raided the kitchen for a midnight snack and chopped together what he found: lettuce, an avocado, bacon, chicken, egg and Roquefort.

In 1970s American kitchens, the craze for 'avocado green' appliances went hand in hand with which other colour?

Harvest gold and avocado green ruled the decade's refrigerators and stoves. They then fell so far from fashion that the pair became shorthand for a dated kitchen, and dealers found such pieces hard to sell.

What was Rudolph Hass's day job when he raised the original Hass avocado tree in the 1920s?

Mail carrier: he was earning 25 cents an hour at the Pasadena post office when he bought his grove, and he never gave the job up. The patent on the world's most widely grown avocado brought him less than $5,000.

How did growers get round Rudolph Hass's 1935 avocado patent?

Grafting cuttings from one bought tree could turn a whole grove into Hass trees without paying again, so the patent earned Rudolph Hass only about $5,000 before it expired in 1952.

What killed the original Hass avocado 'mother tree', which was cut down in 2002?

Root rot ate at the tree for years before it was felled; its wood was kept at a nursery while growers debated carving it into plaques, pens or guacamole bowls.

In which county did the original Hass avocado tree grow?

Los Angeles County's La Habra Heights, on the Orange County line, was grove country when Hass planted there; by the time the tree died it stood in front of a house among suburban streets.

The word 'avocado' comes via Spanish 'aguacate' from a word in which language?

The Nahuatl word āhuacatl was also used as a euphemism for 'testicle', which is where the popular claim about the word's origin comes from.

By what reptilian name was the avocado commonly known in Florida in the early 1900s?

Alligator pear began as a garbling of the fruit's Spanish-derived name; growers found it off-putting and campaigned to make 'avocado' the standard name instead.

The name 'guacamole' comes from a word that literally translates as what?

Avocado sauce is the literal meaning: the fruit's old name joined to mōlli, 'sauce', the same word that gives Mexican mole its name.

Which South American country, better known for coffee, was the world's second-largest avocado grower in 2024?

Colombia grew about 1.3 million tonnes that year, on Andean slopes wet enough that most of its orchards get by on rain alone.

An avocado won't begin to ripen until what happens to it?

It is picked from the tree: an avocado matures on the branch but stays hard until it is cut loose, so growers can leave a crop hanging for months and pick to order.

Which US state has named the avocado its state fruit?

California has claimed the avocado as its state fruit since 2013 and grows about 90% of the US crop, yet that now covers only a fraction of what Americans eat.

Fallbrook, the self-styled 'Avocado Capital of the World', lies in which county?

San Diego County's Fallbrook gave itself the title and throws an avocado festival every year, but rival growing towns abroad claim the very same crown.

Placing an avocado in a bag with a banana speeds up ripening because bananas give off which gas?

Ethylene is a plant hormone that ripe fruit gives off; packers pump the same gas into ripening rooms so that hard avocados reach the shelf ready to eat.

What were shoppers filmed doing that led Gil Henry to pioneer avocado 'ripening rooms'?

Squeezing them and putting them back was what the hidden camera caught: shoppers wanted ripe fruit, so in 1983 Henry began ripening avocados before they reached the store.

What toxin in avocado leaves and skins is dangerous to livestock, birds and pets?

Persin doesn't trouble people eating the ripe flesh, yet canaries have died from the same fruit and browsing goats from the leaves.

What is traditionally added to cut avocado or guacamole to slow it turning brown?

Lime or lemon juice keeps guacamole green for longer; the flesh browns because an enzyme, polyphenol oxidase, goes to work as soon as it meets the air.

Most of the fat in an avocado is which type?

Monounsaturated fat makes up about two-thirds of the total, most of it oleic acid, so an avocado's fat profile resembles olive oil's.

What reputation did the avocado carry among the Aztecs?

An aphrodisiac: the Aztecs are said to have held that a fruit's shape passed on its powers, and they saw in the avocado the shape of a testicle.

Avocado growing is thought to have begun in the Tehuacán Valley of which state, just south-east of Mexico City?

Puebla's Coxcatlán Cave, in that valley, held avocado remains some 10,000 years old, left by foragers who camped there in the seasons when food was plentiful.

What fruit will a tree grown from a Hass avocado seed bear?

A new, non-Hass variety: a seed shuffles its parents' genes, so the tree it grows into is a one-off, and it can take ten years or more to fruit at all.

A magazine picture of an avocado tree hung with what persuaded Hass to buy his grove?

Dollar bills dangled from the tree in the picture, so Hass put his savings and a loan from his sister into a 1.5-acre grove, where one stubborn seedling made his name.

An avocado tree can open about a million flowers in a season; roughly how many become fruit?

About 150 is typical, one fruit for every 10,000 or so flowers; the tree sheds the rest, many of them as fruitlets no bigger than a pea or a walnut.

A 2019 genetic study found the Hass avocado is 61% Mexican and 39% which other avocado race?

Guatemalan genes make up the smaller share; the seed came from a Whittier nurseryman who planted whatever seeds he could find, so nobody knows which variety was the parent.

Besides two Mesoamerican highland types, which third avocado race, the lowland one, gives Florida its summer crop?

West Indian avocados are the least cold-tolerant of the three races, so they need a near-tropical climate such as southern Florida's, while cooler districts plant the two highland types.

The Fuerte avocado, whose name is Spanish for 'strong', earned it by surviving what in 1913?

A severe freeze killed most of one nursery's young avocado trees that winter; the variety that came through was named Fuerte and led the market until Hass overtook it.

Tiny seedless avocados from unpollinated blossoms are sometimes sold in shops as what?

Cocktail avocados are the lucky few: growers call the stoneless fruit 'cukes', and most are too small to be worth much, so few ever reach a shop.

Which future US president noted in a 1751 diary how popular avocados were in Barbados?

George Washington, then 19, was on his only trip abroad, keeping his sick brother company; he caught smallpox on the island but still found time to write up its fruit.

An avocado flower opens twice on different days, first to receive pollen and the second time as what?

Male: the flower closes after its first opening and comes back the next day shedding pollen, and because varieties keep different hours, growers plant two types side by side.

In which city did café owner Bill Granger put avocado toast on a menu in 1993, a claimed first?

Sydney's bills café served it in 1993 and Granger usually gets the credit, though a Brisbane newspaper was recommending avocado on toast back in 1929.

A 2016 column about '$22 smashed avocado' made avocado toast a stereotype of which generation?

Millennials were told by columnist Bernard Salt that $22 brunches were costing them a house deposit; replies pointed out that house prices had long since outrun the price of smashed avocado.

Which privateer and naturalist gave the first English guacamole-style recipe in 1697?

He recorded it in A New Voyage Round the World during one of his three circumnavigations of the globe.

National Guacamole Day, 16 September, falls on the same date as which national holiday?

Mexican Independence Day recalls the call to revolt of 16 September 1810; Cinco de Mayo, a peak for US avocado sales, marks a later battle with France.

What is the three-legged volcanic-stone mortar traditionally used to make guacamole called?

Molcajete bowls are carved from a single block of basalt, a design older than the Spanish conquest, and the rough stone is said to give guacamole a texture no blender matches.

In Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, the avocado goes by which Quechua-derived name?

Chileans eat 'pan con palta' for breakfast, a habit documented in a cookbook as far back as 1926.

In Trinidad and Tobago, the avocado is commonly known by which name?

Zaboca comes from Trinidad's French-based Creole, in which the French word avocat became zaboka.

In parts of India and Hong Kong, the avocado is known by which dairy-inspired name?

Butter fruit fits the texture so well that the idea keeps recurring: the Chinese name means the same, and English speakers once called it midshipman's butter.

How is avocado traditionally eaten in Brazil?

Mashed with sugar and lime as a dessert, or whipped into ice cream and milkshakes: Brazilians treat the avocado as a true fruit, where Mexicans reach for the salt.

Avocado oil is prized for frying because of its exceptionally high what?

Smoke point is the selling point, yet a 2020 UC Davis study found that most avocado oil on sale in the US was either rancid or cut with cheaper oils.

What is 'avocado hand'?

A knife injury from cutting the fruit, typically when the blade slips as someone digs out the stone; US cases climbed from 1998 to 2017 as avocados caught on.

In French, the word for avocado, 'avocat', is also the word for which profession?

Lawyer: French avocat does double duty, and Spanish speakers once bent the fruit's name towards their own old word for an advocate, which is how English came by 'avocado'.

Because the milky juice of an avocado stone turns reddish-black in air, what was it once used as?

Ink: the fluid dries to an indelible red-brown or black, and documents written with it in the days of the conquistadors survive in the archives of Popayán.

The avocado's oversized seed may have evolved to be swallowed whole by which extinct animals?

Giant ground sloths are the usual suspects, alongside elephant-like gomphotheres; critics of the idea point out that agoutis and spectacled bears carry avocados off today.

Weight for weight, an avocado contains more of which nutrient than a banana?

Potassium: raw avocado has about 485 mg per 100 g against a banana's 358 mg, while the banana comes out ahead on the other three.

What household item is traditionally used to suspend an avocado stone over a glass while it sprouts?

Toothpicks pushed into its sides rest on the rim of a glass and roots appear within weeks, though the houseplant that follows needs plenty of sun before it will ever fruit.

People allergic to which of these are often warned that avocados may set off a reaction too?

Latex: some of the proteins in natural rubber also turn up in avocado, banana, kiwi and chestnut, so the immune system can mistake the fruit for the glove.

What drove avocado growers in the town of Tancítaro to form their own armed defence force in 2013?

Drug cartels were extorting and kidnapping local growers, so the farmers clubbed together to buy guns and build barricades, and volunteers took to guarding the roads into town.

Avocados are famously fatty, but what makes up most of the flesh?

Water accounts for about 73% of raw avocado and fat for only around 15%, though that fat still supplies most of the calories.

What does prolonged cooking do to avocado flesh?

Turns it bitter: that is why avocado is generally served raw, or stirred into a hot dish only at the last moment.

Which country had become Europe's biggest supplier of avocados by 2019?

Peru's crop reaches Europe through the northern summer, while most of Mexico's avocado exports go north to the United States.

Guasacaca, a cousin of guacamole served over grilled meat, belongs to the cooking of which country?

Venezuela's guasacaca blends avocado with herbs, peppers and vinegar and goes on arepas and grilled meat; the Dominican sauce of the same name has no avocado in it at all.

Which European country is the main gateway for the avocado exports of South America's biggest grower?

The Netherlands is the way in because of Rotterdam: fruit landed at its port is sold on across Europe, so much of it only passes through.

The clipped form 'avo' originated as a diminutive in which variety of English?

Australian English loves a clipped word, and 'avo' has since become everyday slang well beyond Australia, Britain included.

Which country's avocado growers launched a long-running publicity campaign in the UK in 1995?

South Africa's growers hired a British PR firm to explain the fruit to shoppers, some of whom had been biting into the skin and complaining that it tasted nothing like a pear.