Consider the Avacado

IMHO, the best fruit ever

Avocados are toxic to almost all animals (including cats and dogs). Humans are a rare exception. It is the only fruit to contain persin, a fatty acid, which, when eaten by animals causes vomiting, diarrhea, and other nasty symptoms. Consumption of large quantities can cause death within twelve hours.

On the other hand, I've never seen a cat or dog show the slightest interest in them, which is good, because I wouldn't want to compete with them. It seems like the quality of avocados available in stores has increased dramatically in the last few years, and few people on the East Coast appreciate them, which is fine with me.

Avocados are berries (fleshy fruits coming from a single ovary). Interestingly, this broad definition of a berry means that bananas, pumpkin, tomatoes, watermelon, and coffee are also berries (you can tell that to the next person who tries to argue that tomatoes are vegetables). Curiously this also excludes strawberries as berries.

Typical of the scientific jargon industry.  Take a word that sensible people understand to mean one thing (a delicious fruit, usually of small size) and insist that it means a subset of those, and include others that have no business being in the group.  Just ignore them; it irritates the shit out of them.

Eighty percent of modern avocados originate from one “mother” tree which was patented by mailman Rudolph Hass from California in 1935. The tree survived until 2002 when it died of root rot. Unfortunately Hass only made $5,000 in his lifetime from his patent on the tree because his partner sold cultivars to anyone who wanted to buy them. Subsequently Hass spent the remainder of his life working for the California Mail Service.

I find this a little dubious.  I remember climbing up and and stealing avocados from the tree across the street when I was a little guy; that had to be 1956 or so.  Avocados were widespread in California and Mexico by that point.  Could a single cultivar have captured the whole market by then?  I doubt it.  On the other hand, Haas are great avocados; I wish they'd lose those awful, thin skinned, monstrosities from Florida. 

Ground Sloth and rider

Avocado also has an interesting characteristic: it is the only berry with no living animal large enough to spread it through consumption and release as dung. This has led scientists to believe that it co-evolved with prehistoric megafauna that were large enough to eat the fruit whole. The megafauna went extinct but the avocado remained as an unusual monument to an unknown dinosaur.

Giant Ground Sloth Dung

I'm envisioning a Giant Ground Sloth, a Pleistocene native to the same areas of the Western Hemisphere.  I'll bet they had a big enough asshole to pass an avocado pit.









 Wombat-socho got the grand Rule 5 Sunday: Bad Reputation (an homage to Joan Jett) up on schedule over at The Other McCain.