Annona cherimola

Annona cherimola is a fairly dense, fast-growing, woody, 
briefly deciduous 
but mostly evergreen, low-branched, spreading tree 
or shrub, 5 metres (16 ft) to 9 metres (30 ft) tall.
Stems and leavesEdit
Mature branches are sappy and woody. Young branches and twigs have a matting of short, fine, rust colored hairs.The leathery leaves are 5–25 centimetres (2.0–9.8 in) long 3–10 centimetres (1.2–3.9 in) wide and mostly elliptic, pointed at the ends and rounded near the leaf stalk.  When young, they are covered with soft, fine, tangled, rust colored hairs.  When mature, the leaves bear hairs only along the veins on the undersurface. Tops are hairless and a dull medium green with paler veins, backs velvety, dull grey-green with raised pale green veins.  New leaves are whitish below.Leaves are single and alternate, dark green and slightly hairy on the top surface. They attach to branches with stout 6–10 millimetres (0.24–0.39 in) long and densely hairy leaf stalks.
FlowersEdit
Cherimoya trees bear very pale green, fleshy flowers. They are 3 centimetres (1.2 in) long,  with very strong fruity odor. Each flower has three outer, greenish, fleshy, oblong, downy petals and three smaller, pinkish inner petals with yellow or brown finely matted hairs outside, whitish with purple spot and many stamens on the inside. Flowers appear on the branches opposite to the leaves, solitary or in pairs or groups of three, on flower stalks that are covered densely with fine rust colored hairs, 8–12 millimetres (0.31–0.47 in) long.  Buds are 15–18 millimetres (0.59–0.71 in) long, 5–8 millimetres (0.20–0.31 in) wide at the base. The pollen is shed as permanent tetrads.
FruitsEdit
  Ripe cherimoya fruits
  Split cherimoya fruit
Cherimoya fruit are large green conical or heart-shaped compound fruit, 10 centimetres (3.9 in) to 20 centimetres (7.9 in) long, with diameters of 5 centimetres (2.0 in) to 10 centimetres (3.9 in), and skin that gives the appearance of having overlapping scales or knobby warts. They ripen to brown with a fissured surface from winter into spring; they weigh on the average 150 grams (5.3 oz) to 500 grams (18 oz) but extra large specimens may weigh 2.7 kilograms (6.0 lb) or more. The ripened flesh is creamy white. When ripe, the skin is green and gives slightly to pressure. Some characterize the fruit flavor as a blend of banana, pineapple, papaya, peach, and strawberry. The fruit can be chilled and eaten with a spoon, which has earned it another nickname, the ice cream fruit. In Peru and Chile, it is commonly used in ice creams and yogurt.The cherimoya fruits are classed according to degree of surface irregularity, as: Lisa, almost smooth, difficult to discern areoles; Impresa, with "fingerprint" depressions; Umbonata, with rounded protrusions at the apex of each areole; Mamilata with fleshy, nipple-like protrusions; Tuberculata, with conical protrusions having wartlike tips.
The flesh of the cherimoya contains numerous hard, inedible, black, bean-like, glossy seeds, 1 centimetre (0.39 in) to 2 centimetres (0.79 in) long and about half as wide.  Cherimoya seeds are poisonous if crushed open. Like other members of the family Annonaceae, the entire plant contain small amounts of neurotoxic acetogenins, such as annonacin, which appear to be linked to atypical parkinsonism in Guadeloupe. Moreover, an extract of the bark can induce paralysis if injected."The pineapple, the mangosteen, and the cherimoya", wrote the botanist Berthold Carl Seemann, "are considered the finest fruits in the world, and I have tasted them in those localities where they are supposed to attain their highest perfection – the pineapple in Guayaquil, the mangosteen in the Indian Archipelago, and the cherimoya on the slopes of the Andes, and if I were asked which would be the best fruit, I would choose without hesitation, cherimoya. Its taste, indeed, surpasses that of every other fruit, and Haenke was quite right when he called it the masterpiece of Nature."

Plant Story™

Annona Cherimola

Annona cherimola

Gallery

Share With Your Friends

More Info

Taxonomy