The common species was introduced into California by Franciscan monks about 1810, and it is still cultivated on a limited scale in the southern part of that state. The odorless flowers, small and greenish-yellow, are 4- or 5-parted, and borne in terminal and axillary panicles. Thanksgiving Day The fruits are usually 4 to 4 1/2 in (10-11.25 cm) wide, ovoid, irregular and knobby, with rough, pitted skin, and there are often gritty particles in the flesh. Pfizer & Co. Research Laboratories, Brooklyn, New York, in experimental work with this compound in rabbits, dogs and cats, observed strong vasodepressive action. Medicinal Uses: The ancient Nahuatl name for the fruits, "cochiztzapotl", is translated "sleepy sapote" or "sleep-producing sapote", and it is widely claimed in Mexico and Central America that consumption of the fruit relieves the pains of arthritis and rheumatism. Please contact us for current availability, Time is running out for Black Friday savings⏳. If picked just a few days before fully ripe and ready to fall, the fruits turn soft quickly but they can be picked several weeks in advance of the failing stage and most will develop full flavor. The leaves, mostly evergreen are alternate, palmately compound, with 3 to 7 lanceolate leaflets, smooth or hairy on the underside. This belief may stem only from the oft-quoted statement to this effect by Dr. Leopoldo Flores in Manual Terapeutica de Plantas Mexicanas, published in 1907, although the Mexican National Commission has received frequent reports of anti-arthritic, anti-rheumatic effects from physicians and their patients. Fairly widely planted in California. 'Yellow'–originated in California; oval with pointed apex, furrowed; skin is bright-yellow and fairly tough; flesh is firm. The trees prosper near the coast of southern California where the mean temperature from April to October is about 65º F (18º C). The woolly-leaved white sapote is native from Yucatan to Costa Rica and has not been widely distributed in cultivation. The white sapotes can be classed as subtropical rather than tropical. Hard freezes will defoliate the tree but will not kill the larger branches. The woolly-leaved is somewhat less hardy than the common white sapote. A large dose (1 g) administered to a dog weighing 11 lbs (5 kg) produced a drastic lowering of blood pressure which persisted even after a brief rise induced by injecting adrenalin. The seed is said to be fatally toxic if eaten raw by humans or animals. . The tree is low-growing and spreading, with smooth leaflets. It is grown commercially in the Gisborne district of New Zealand and to some extent in South Africa. Sterile pollen or lack of cross-pollination are suggested causes of aborted seeds and heavy shedding of immature fruits. C. edulis is usually found growing naturally at elevations between 2,000 and 3,000 ft (600-900 m) and occasionally in Guatemala up to a maximum of 9,000 ft (2,700 m) in areas not subject to heavy rainfall. The leaves, mostly evergreen are alternate, palmately compound, with 3 to 7 lanceolate leaflets, smooth or hairy on the underside. The trees grew well and produced little in the coastal plain; bore good crops in the interior and commercial prospects seemed bright but the fruit did not appeal to consumers and was too attractive to fruit flies. Black scale often occurs on nursery stock and occasionally on mature trees in California. It is densely branching, drooping at maturity. Of course, many of the trees planted have been seedlings bearing fruits of inferior size and quality, but even the best have never attained popularity in this country. Young trees tend toward a single, limber stem for first 2 years often requiring staking. There are 4 to 5 seeds. reported hypnotic or toxic properties." Copyright © 2015-2016 Louie's Nursery | All Rights Reserved. 'Dade'–grown at the Agricultural Research and Education Center, Homestead, Florida from a seed of a selected fruit of a local seedling tree. Difficult to propagate. The tree bears regularly and heavily in California and South Africa. Grafting is a common practice in California and Florida in midsummer. In California, 'Pike' and 'Yellow' bloom in the spring and again in late summer and fall, the fruits from late blooms maturing gradually over the winter. Round; skin golden-yellow tinged with green, thin; … Cuttings are very difficult to root. Worlee & Co., in Hamburg, Germany, with an accompanying explanation that both the fruit and the seeds possessed sleep-inducing principles but without the undesirable after-effects of opium. In France, several investigators confirmed the narcotic nature of the seeds. Today it is seldom seen outside of fruit tree collections. Fax: (951) 780-5110, Closed Easter C. sapota is very similar but the leaves usually have only 3, somewhat smaller, leaflets. In 1958, R.T. Major and F. Dürsch, of the Cobb Chemical Laboratory, University of Virginia, working under a grant from Merck & Co., isolated from C. edulis seeds a compound which they identified as Na, Na-dimethy1histamine, formerly found in nature only in the sponge, Geodia gigas. Commercial growers in New Zealand have had success with air-layers. White sapote derivatives were among the medicinal plant products displayed at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904 and explained in the slender book, Materia Medica Mexicana: A Manual of Mexican Medicinal Herbs, prepared by the Mexican National Commission for that occasion. 'Parroquia'–originated in California; oval, 2 1/2 in (6.25 cm) wide, 3 in (7.5 cm) long; skin yellow-green, smooth, thin; flesh ivory, of very good flavor. Of the 3 larger-growing forms, the best known is the common white sapote, called zapote blanco by Spanish-speaking people, abché or ahache by Guatemalan Indians, and Mexican apple in South Africa, and widely identified as C. edulis Llave & Lex. The woolly-leaved white sapote, known to the Maya as yuy and set apart in Guatemala as matasano de mico, has been commonly considered a distinct species, C. tetrameria Millsp., but it may be only a variant of C. edulis. White Sapote Details. From one process, a yellow resinous mass resulted which functioned as an attractive and lethal bait for American cockroaches, having the advantage of killing on the spot rather than at some distance after ingestion of the poison. In the obsolete Farmacopea Mexicana, where the fruit is mentioned as narcotic... Close by cultivated in Central America natural enemies but the leaves, mostly evergreen are alternate, palmately compound with. 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