Garden Musings

Our third issue of Tropical Visions, the RareFruit Review takes an in-depth look at the recent history of the avocado, Persea americana, a fruit that is one of the most popular of tropicals. These articles also show, to a degree, the importance of germplasm preservation and distribution. When I lived closer to Chapman Field, in south Florida, I spent hours looking at their accession and distribution records. I also spent hours in the field, sometimes seeking out trees I learned about through their records in previous visits. I managed to learn quite a bit from Drs. Knight and Soderholm and the very efficient Irene Galvin. They have moved on and I regret that my visits over the last several years have averaged less than one a year.

I know that the current staff has a lot to share in tropical fruits and more. Without the kind assistance of Wilhelmina C. Wasik, a Biological Research Technician at the station we would not have the beautiful avocado photographs that grace this issue.

"Tropical Visions is not your typical magazine or newsletter." We said this in the first two issues and remain convinced with this. With extensive help from David Fay we will begin serializing Perennial Edible Fruits of the Tropics in this issue. This is a part of our series of reprinting some of the important historical fruit publications. That I know two of the three authors makes the reprint especially significant on a personal level. I'll be pestering the authors for any update or other comments they may wish to provide.

As with past issues we'll indulge in the editorial luxury of making minor corrections for a couple of weeks after the release of this issue. We do not want this to become a habit, but, for a while, it reduces some of the pressures from having such a small staff. It also helps us adapt the publication to be accessible to a wide variety of platforms and OSs.

We wanted to give you a book review this time, and hope you like our choice. If you know of a good book in our sphere of interest let us know about it. If we can we'll acquire a copy and write it up for you. Same as to garden, grove products - if we can get them to test we will write up the results.

We continue to recognize the need, and value of rarefruiters world wide and are seeking advice and contributors from as wide and diverse a group as we can find. Our cover photo was taken the Crowley's nursery in Sarasota, Florida where we found many fruits and ornamentals to photograph.

Thanks to all of you who sent in questions and comments on the first two issues. We are posting most of this one open to all but expect to see more and more of the content for our subscribers only. Founding status is still open but remember its not required and the regular rate is a bargain.

Best of growing,

Bob Cannon

Editor

We found the following very small avocado in a local market. The crate they came out of was labeled California but I could not see a variety name. Can any of our readers tell us about this fruit? I regret that the flavor was not too good as the fruit seemed 2-3 days past peak, I hope to try one again in better condition.

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