WHITE SAPOTE

                         Illustration by Mary-Anne King

Carolanne Sudderth

Mirror staff writer.

   You won’t often find sapotes at the local market. This globular yellow fruit has not been engineered for shipping or shelf life. It’s still as sweet, crushable and quick to rot as to some of us remember tomatoes were before the genetic engineers got their hands on them. 
   Hooray for our side. When you find them, they are sweet, spoonably mooshy, and good! Their flavor has been compared to that of an over-ripe banana or a soft peach. The mouth feel is custardy with the slightly granular texture of a ripe pear. 
   Native to central Mexico, the trees grow well in Southern California climes and seems to be successful wherever oranges do well. Los Angeles Pierce College has a grove of them in their orchard, where the exotic fruit can be purchased for an exorbitant 25 cents a pound.
Broad, five-fingered leaves six to ten inches across cast a fairly dense shade and are (for the most part) evergreen on the trees. However, extremes at either end of the thermometer will cause a sapote to drop its leaves as fast as a cartoon chicken does its feathers . This is followed quickly, however, with a flush of new growth. Established trees can withstand occasional frosts to 22 degrees—obviously not a problem on the Westside. 
   Fruits range from 3” to 4” in size and can be round, oval, or ovoid, symmetrical, or otherwise. The skin is thin, and edible like an apple’s but can have a bitter flavor. Color ranges from a greenish to a golden yellow with pale flesh pillowing five to seven one-inch-long seeds. Starting your own tree from seed can be iffy. Grafts are your best guarantee of getting what you expect fruit-wise. 
   Sapote trees attain a height of between 15 and 50 feet and, like most trees, prefer full sun. They are drought tolerant, but prefer regular water and do well in almost any well-drained soil. 
   A single tree can produce an embarrassment of riches, often several hundred pounds of fruit per tree.
   For this reason, it is extremely important to consider a sapote tree’s location in the garden—unless you’re partial to scraping pounds and pounds of spoonably mooshy fruit off the patio.
   New trees should be planted where excess fruit will disappear into the ground cover. Young trees tend to grow fast and stake-straight. Pinch out the terminal bud to encourage branching. Branches are brittle and can break in the wind. Proper pruning is essential to eliminate areas of weakness such as narrow crotches. 
   You can expect fruit within three or four years of planting from a grafted tree, ten from a seeded one. As with almost anything, the fruit tastes best tree-ripened, but it tends to fall off. Handle with care as fruit is easily bruised and squished spots will turn black on the surface and bitter beneath. Compromise, if you must, by clipping hard, mature fruit from the tree, leaving a short piece of stem attached which will fall off when the fruit achieves custardy-ripeness.
   Trees are resistant to both those bains of Southern California trees, phytophora and armillaria oak root fungi, but can be preyed upon by snails, scale, and (it says here) parrots and other fruit-loving birds.