Feijoa

No, I don't mean feijoada, a meat and bean stew that many here are probably familiar with, I mean the fruit found in New Zealand.

The taste is sort of strawberry/banana/guava - very nice, but apparently the short season and easily bruised fruit doesn't equate to an export market.

I remember them from small plantings in Hawaii, but my secretary reminded me of them and I thought I'd ask how many peopl ehad ever tasted them. Wish they came in here......

[Jenise]

I love those things almost more than life itself. They grow easily in Southern California (but even then are rarely seen in stores), and when I was a child, the Winsors up the street had a magnificent big old tree of them that I got to help myself to often. We never picked them, we just waited until they fell off onto the soft grass below and harvested those. We called them guavas--I never heard the name Feijoa until the last ten years. When Bob and I moved back to Huntington Beach in the mid-90's, it was the first tree we planted in our yard. Moving away, that was the plant I found the hardest to leave.

They have beautiful flowers, too. Small, but lovely to look at.

When I was a very small child, we used to visit an ancient great-auntie who lived in a big dark house overlooking the sea at Victor Harbor. She had a wild overgrown garden with many old-fashioned delights in it. One of which was a fiejoa tree. I used to love the flowers.

fiejoa.jpg

[Jenise]

They ARE lovely, aren't they, Matilda, I'm glad you reminded us of that. Somewhat like a cross between a fuschia and an acacia.

They call them guavas out here as well. They show up once in a while at our farmers' market. They are indeed delicious!