By Jeffrey Miller - The Conversation
Given the current popularity of avocado, it's hard to believe that we came close to not having them in our lifetime.
In my new book 'The Avocado: A Global History', I explain how the avocado survived a series of ecological and cultural vicissitudes that could have easily led to extinction.
Instead, the avocado persevered, thrived, and became one of the most Instagrammable foods in the world.
A 'ghost of evolution'
Avocados belong to the bay family, the same group of plants that includes bay leaves and cinnamon.
Laurels thrive in warm subtropical climates, and
the avocado evolved in the warm climates of Central America during the Neogene period, approximately 10 million years ago.
During the Pleistocene era, which followed the Neogene, the largest animals on Earth were what we call megaherbivores, giant animals that subsisted almost entirely on a vegetarian diet.
Most of these, like the giant sloth, are much larger than today's mega-herbivore, the African elephant.
The giant herbivores of the Pleistocene Mesoamerica, such as the gomphothere, the giant armadillo, and the toxodon, needed hundreds of kilos of food a day to survive.
Since foods such as leaves and grasses are very low in calories and fat, animals appreciated any energy-dense, fatty food.
Here it comes in: avocado.
Megaherbivores didn't fight over avocados and ate them like we do today.
Instead, their throats and digestive tracts were so large that they simply swallowed the avocado whole and excreted the undigested pit.
[The guacamole route: from Michoacán to Miami for the Super Bowl]
In a process known as
endozoochory
, the manure pile would serve as food for the next generation of avocado trees.
As these giant animals roamed and grazed, they
spread the fruit throughout what is now central Mexico.
Avocados became what botanist Connie Barlow calls a "ghost of evolution," a species that should have gone extinct but somehow survived. Getty Images
But once the megaherbivores died, the fruit was in trouble.
The herbivores that remained had throats too small to ingest a whole avocado seed, and to drop the giant seed so that its roots were generated, which was difficult for the tree's survival;
to prosper, it needs to spread more widely.
Avocados became what botanist Connie Barlow calls a
'
ghost of evolution
'
, a species that should have gone extinct but somehow was able to survive.
What the avocado needed was the lifespan of its trees, which survive much longer than most fruit trees.
There are 100-year-old trees still bearing fruit in California and 400-year-old trees in central Mexico.
By living so long and being so well adapted to their ecological niche, avocados were able to hold out until their next disperser, Homo sapiens, arrived.
More 'stops and starts'
The first humans in Mesoamerica quickly appreciated the virtues of the avocado.
Groups like the Olmecs and Mayans started the first avocado orchards and began growing specimens that tasted better and had meatier fruits, a selection process that gave us the types of avocados we love today.
Megaherbivores didn't fight over avocados and ate them like we do today.
Instead, their throats and digestive tracts were so large that they simply swallowed the avocado whole and excreted the undigested pit. Xinhua News Agency / Getty Images
Avocados were so important to the Mayans that the fourteenth month of their calendar was named for them.
In the 1830s, Dr. Floridian Henry Perrine came across avocados while serving as the United States Consul in Campeche, Mexico, and thought they would be an excellent addition to Florida's horticultural offerings.
[Mexican avocados: US could suspend import]
He sent some seeds to a friend on Indian Key in Florida who planted them.
Not long after, Perrine returned, and the Second Seminole War broke out.
Perrine and his family sought refuge from the fighting, but he was killed by one of the warring factions during a raid on the island.
The island was abandoned and the avocados were forgotten.
Hot and humid
Florida had been hospitable to avocados, but California has many cold days
in the winter months that make it difficult for most avocado varieties to grow.
This could have been another dead end for the fruit, but early settlers in California tried to establish them in America after a few unsuccessful attempts in the 1850s and 1860s, producing judge RB Ord obtained some cold-hardy specimens from the center of Mexico.
A cold tolerant variety was needed for California to have a profitable avocado industry.
Without it, the avocado could have remained a local delicacy for Mexico.
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One of the first cold-resistant specimens was a variety that received the name
'
Strong
'
.
The Fuerte avocado earned its name because it was one of the few varieties that survived the famous “Freeze of '13,” a period of cold weather that nearly ruined Southern California's nascent fruit industries in the winter of 1913.
Until the 1940s, Fuerte was the most popular avocado variety in America, accounting for about 75% of avocados sold.
Hass breaks through
Since then, Fuerte has been relegated to niche products and represents only about 2% of the California market.
Instead, most of the avocados sold today are the variety known as Hass.
But if it weren't for a couple of kids with precocious palates, the world would never have had a Hass avocado.
Avocados belong to the bay family, the same group of plants that includes bay leaves and cinnamon.
The Hass avocado is named after Rudolph Hass, a postman who lived in La Habra, California.
Originally from Milwaukee, Hass joined the thousands of Americans who made their way to western California in the 1920s and 1930s.
After reading a brochure about the money to be made from growing avocados, he borrowed enough money to buy a small plot of land with Fuerte avocado trees.
In the late 1920s, Hass bought some avocado seeds to grow rootstock for his budding nursery.
[The Mexican tlayuda is crowned the queen of Netflix street food]
From one of these seeds grew a fun tree that rejected the Strong branches that Hass wanted to graft onto it, a process that involves combining two tree plants with different characteristics.
He was about to cut down the misbehaving tree, but his kids told him these little avocados were their favorites,
so he relented and kept the tree.
After testing them himself, he thought they had marketability potential and began selling them to people at work and in a city market.
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Hass avocados slowly became popular, and in 1935 Hass patented the tree, the first patent ever granted on a tree in the United States.
But most growers, instead of buying your tree, evaded their patent and simply grafted their cuttings themselves.
This practice was illegal, but enforcement in the 1930s was spotty.
Today, Americans eat 100 million pounds of avocados on Super Bowl Sunday, and Hass should have died a rich man, but he never made enough to leave the post office, and it is estimated that he only earned around $ 5,000 for the patent.
Jeffrey Miller is Associate Professor of Hospitality Management at Colorado State University.
This report was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here.