Fruit Tree of the Day: Atemoya
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Today’s fruit tree is the atemoya. It’s a cross between a sugar apple (called an ate in some places) and a cherimoya. Pure cherimoyas taste better, but they don’t grow very well in Florida. The only place in the contiguous US it can be grown is parts of SoCal. Fun fact: Mark Twain actually called the cherimoya “the most delicious fruit known to men.”
It tastes like custard, and has the same texture, too. When ripe, put in the fridge, slice it open, and you can just eat out the pulp with a spoon. Healthy, natural ice cream.
You may be wondering why yesterday I said it was a good thing to have a carambola tree alongside this tree. It turns out that bees can’t pollinate this tree, and a beetle does instead. It lays its eggs in rotting fruit. Otherwise, you would have to hand pollinate each flower to get fruit. Lots of people do this, as hand-pollinated flowers produce superior fruit. It’s not very complicated to do, but it is tedious. That’s why you won’t the fruit in many stores (though I did find one a few years back and can confirm it’s delicious).
This tree has a cousin called the soursop or guanabana.
It tastes like a cross between a cherimoya and a pineapple. You’re probably more likely to find this fruit–my local Hispanic and Asian stores carry them from time to time. $9 a pound, but worth it. I like this better than the atemoya, but it can’t be grown in the continental US, either.
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We’re overdue for a trip to the Asian market. I’ll have to put this on the “excuse me, do you happen to have…” list
@ybmuG The Asian name for the second fruit is soursop; guanabana is the Hispanic name for it.
You’re probably going to have a tough time finding a cherimoya, though. The only time I found one was at a tropical fruit tasting event at my local fruit tree nursery.
@Weboh @ybmuG
Which one can you put in the fridge and it taste like custard?
@Star2236 @ybmuG Cherimoya. You’ll probably have a harder time finding that one, though. If you have any South American markets, check there. Or sometimes smaller produce stands carry exotic fruit when they’re in season.
Some interesting health facts about the cousin cherimoya. Now I really want to find it.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cherimoya
I may try the tea:
https://www.plumdeluxe.com/product/custard-apple-cherimoya-herbal-tea
Do the beetle that pollinates the Atemoya tree lays its eggs in the rotting fruit of the Carambola tree?
@mike808 It’s not like carambolas are its favorite thing in the world to lay eggs in, (it’s fruit agnostic) but you’ll have no shortage of rotting fruit if you have a carambola tree. May as well put it to use.
I think I had this once in Brazil - something called “fruta do conde.” It was delicious. I didn’t know it grew in the US.
@Kyeh I just looked it up, and I’m pretty sure what you had was a sugar apple. Still in the same family.
I don’t really care for sugar apples, as you just taste the sugar more than the taste of the fruit. Maybe Brazilian ones taste better, though. They know a lot more about growing them than we do, since they came from there.
If you liked the sugar apple, you should definitely try and get a cherimoya or soursop.
@Weboh I did read around a little about it before posting but found it kind of confusing. I want to try the cherimoya but as you’ve said, if we get them here in the store they’re super-expensive and probably not that good. “Soursop” doesn’t sound appealing at all, what a name!
@Kyeh Trust me: If you loved sugar apples, you’ll love cherimoya too. Maybe not enough to spend $9 a pound for it on a daily basis, but it rarely comes in anyway.
And yeah, soursop isn’t a very good name for it. It’s not as sour as a lemon; it’s closer to the flavor of a pineapple.
@Weboh I just need to visit Florida someday to try all these things where they grow! I do have some fruit trees, one apple (but the apples aren’t very good) and a lot of plum trees. Those have nice fruit and I managed to get enough this year to make a couple of plum tortes, before a bear came through and stole all the rest of them. It left evidence in the form of a pile of poo, and then I actually saw it in the road about 20 ft. away the next night!
@Kyeh Yes, come to Florida. We’re a lot better than the memes would have you believe.
California can grow the same things, but I believe the memes, so I’m not going there.
I kind of wish I could grow peaches and cherries, so there’s pluses to living where you do, too. If you don’t like the apples on your tree, you could always cut it down and plant a new one… or buy a new tree and graft it onto the current one. That way you don’t have to wait years for that tree to grow.
@Kyeh @Weboh there are some varieties of peaches that can grow in florida. Maybe you are far enough North for them?
https://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/edibles/fruits/peaches.html
I would love to grow cherries. I can grow the Barbados cherry, but it’s not really a snacking cherry. Cherry trees blooming is so beautiful, I’d love to see that in my yard.
https://peoplestrustinsurance.com/homeowners-academy/2015/02/16/growing-cherry-trees-in-florida#:~:text=The Barbados Cherry
@Weboh I love the blossoms on the apple tree, and it shades my house so I’ll probably keep it, but I might try to find a tree that has good pie apples someday. It’s always a challenge to get the fruit before the critters do though. In addition to bears, the deer and raccoons and squirrels and birds think this is THEIR yard!
@RiotDemon @Weboh Those trees are beautiful. I’d also like to grow cherries and peaches but it seems like a lot of work to spray and then put on the netting to protect the fruit from birds, etc. A retirement project maybe.
@RiotDemon Yeah, I’m aware of the low-chill peach varieties. This area used to be just cold enough for them, but it’s too warm now. Which is fine, because it used to be too cold to grow lots of these fruits.
I really wish the Barbados cherry and Suriname cherry actually tasted like cherries. They were named that based on looks, not taste.
@Kyeh If you want to keep the tree but also want good tasting fruit from it, you can cut off a couple branches and graft branches from a good tasting variety in their place. Then, all the apples that form on those branches will be of the other variety.
@Weboh That sounds like a good idea, but I’ve never done anything like that. I suppose I could find someone in town who knows how. Are you an arborist yourself?
@Kyeh I’m not yet an arborist, but I want to be. I was planning on going to school for it before @amehzinggrace brought the pandemic on us. Next year, though!
Someone at your local nursery should be able to show you how to do a graft, or even do it themselves for a fee. Or, there’s always Youtube. I’m sure someone did a tutorial there showing how to do it.
@Weboh Oh, that’s a good idea. What I’d love to do is graft a branch from one (or both!) of my neighbor’s trees on to mine, because hers are heirloom trees from her family and the apples are great for baking. Neat idea, I’ll try to do that sometime! And yes, it sounds like you’ve found your calling - I hope you can pursue it soon.
My mother’s beau is a remarkable guy - he was a linguistics professor but has always been interested in trees.For years he’s gone out collecting acorns and conifer offshoots with generic anomalies. He found a “witches broom” on a pine tree that has yellow needles when it’s young and developed a strain of trees that got named after him. So I would love to get him to help me, but he’s elderly and his health has been iffy lately so I’m not sure if I can.
@Kyeh @Weboh you know good and well I wasn’t the plague bearer… and my blame days are long gone…
@amehzinggrace @Kyeh Yes, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep on blaming you for funzies!
@Kyeh @RiotDemon @Weboh The cherry trees my neighbors had in northern ID none of them did anything to protect them from birds, spray them, etc. They had lots of fruit.
@Kidsandliz @RiotDemon @Weboh Really? I’m surprised…
@Kyeh @RiotDemon @Weboh There were tons of trees - many of them pretty big like maybe 30’ or so tall and a good minivan and a half across or so. These aren’t like big blueberry bushes or black berry growth or anything where that stuff doesn’t get much more than a couple of feet over your head and it would be relatively easy to net.
In a “normal” city residential lot (in the NW cherry area) my next door neighbor had one big mature tree and how you’d get a net over that I have no idea as that sucker had branches across much of the back yard and around as tall as the 2 story house. The deal we had (she was a senior) was that if we picked everything that could be reached from a 6’ ladder for her (outside of handfuls we’d eat as we picked) we could have anything we could reach while in the tree or on our roof (my house was one story, hers was two).
Straight across the street they had 5 in their side yard (they lived on a corner). Those trees weren’t as big yet but they had been planted too close together and so the branches touched and they were as high as the second story windows. I have no idea how many kinds of cherry trees there are but these were dark red and really sweet.
There were trees all over town so not like a shortage for wildlife.That town (and those people) were big time into organic. They always had enough cherries for their needs (and for the poachers - as in the rest of the neighborhood - although outside of grabbing a few that could be reached from the sidewalk as you walked by permission was asked to gather a bag full or whatever), lots on the ground… they weren’t growing them to sell or anything. In both cases the trees came with the house when they bought the house. I’d imagine if they’d spray and protect they’d have a ton more than they had but since so much was going to waste there was no need. Cleaning up after cherries all over the ground (or in my case in my gutters and roof and edge of my yard) was a pain as these trees are messy when the fruit falls.
Having lived there makes it hard to pay grocery store prices for cherries (or the on family farm with blueberry, black berry and to some degree raspberry) when I had them for free. Can’t eat nearly as much of them when you have to pay
. Not to mention being perfectly ripe tastes better than the ones in the store. Bummer.
@Kidsandliz @RiotDemon @Weboh Wow, lucky! Well, that makes sense that they wouldn’t need to protect them because the critters probably were eating them and still leaving plenty. In good years my plum trees have had enough for me even after the animals gorged themselves; it’s been humans that take too much! One year a guy who did repairs to my patio asked if he could have some to make jam - and then pretty much cleaned them out! He did bring a jar but it wasn’t jam so much as plum syrup. And then he had the nerve to call the next year and ask if he could have more, but it was a low-yield year and I said no, not that I’d have let him anyway.
/image guanabana restaurant Florida
I’ve been here once.
Guanabana/soursop is my favourite fruit after pomegranate. I also adore sweetsops and all the various *moyas and sugar/custard apples.
This is the fruit of the day I was waiting for!
I grew up eating cherimoyas. So delicious.
@ELUNO Neat! I wish I got to eat them that often. Where did you grow up? South America?
I am thinking pawpaw has to be on your list? Related to these, but native to the US. Described as banana-mango-pineapple flavor, and zones 5-9
@kevinrs No, it’s not on the list, because I’m focusing on more tropical varieties. This can’t really fruit in most parts of Florida now because it needs cold, and global warming is taking that away.
Still nice to have this here, though. All of you outside of Florida, here’s a fruit you can grow! From what I read, it tastes almost as good as cherimoya. It is basically the deciduous cousin of the cherimoya.
@Weboh well, from what I read, it grows in parts of florida. It seems everything you’ve posted so far only grows where the weather doesn’t get below 40 or so, and I thought you’d be expanding, since you said you were going to run out of fruit trees.
@kevinrs Yeah, you’re right. Part of the reason I’m focusing on plants that grow in my area of Florida is those are the ones I have experience with. Anything else and I’d just be telling you what you’d learn in a Google search.
Plus, since pawpaw is related to cherimoya, I think all the same facts about how to grow them and everything would still apply, so the post would mostly be redundant. Though it’s nice you added it here so that people would know they can grow it in other places.