Feijoa Or Pineapple Guava

**Propagation:** Seed taken from ripe fruit germinates reliably, while named selections are increased from cuttings taken in summer to keep their traits true.

**Siting:** Full sun brings the best flowering and fruiting, though the shrub tolerates light or partial shade, and it grows in soils ranging from sand to heavy clay as long as drainage is good and the pH leans slightly acidic. It is hardy across USDA zones 8 through 11, tolerating brief cold to around 26–27°F, though fruit and tissue can be damaged below 28°F, and it actually needs 50 to 200 hours of winter chill for a good fruit set while temperatures above 100°F can cause fruit to drop.

**Watering and feeding:** Deep, regular watering paired with a protective mulch supports the plant's shallow roots and improves fruit quality, though established plants are drought tolerant and mainly show stress by dropping fruit and leaves in prolonged dry spells; occasional mineral feeding during spring and summer supports growth, while organic fertilizer is not recommended.

**Pollination:** Because plants propagated from cuttings share the same genetics as their parent, a single clone often will not pollinate itself well, so growers commonly keep two distinct plants nearby for good fruit set; birds and bees carry out pollination in the wild and garden, and hand pollination is the most reliable method when growers want maximum fruit yield.

**Pruning:** The shrub responds well to being pruned back at the branch tips after harvest, and it can be trained as a dense hedge, an espalier against a wall, or a single-trunked small tree, needing roughly 6 to 24 feet of space depending on the form chosen.

Pineapple guava is largely trouble-free, though black scale and fruit flies appear in some areas, and aphids or fungal problems can develop where the climate is humid. Deer rarely browse the plant.

**Harvest:** Fruit takes roughly four to seven months to ripen after flowering, appearing from late summer into fall, with tree-ripened fruit giving the best flavor; ripe fruit can be collected as windfalls or by shaking the tree, and it bruises easily, sometimes needing a few more days on a windowsill to finish ripening after picking. Plants typically begin bearing fruit two to four years after planting and reach full fruiting maturity at eight to ten years.

**Culinary:** The fruit is eaten fresh by halving and scooping out the pulp, and is also made into jams, jellies, pies, cakes, puddings, cocktails, and stewed fruit dishes; the petals of the flowers are edible as well, often compared in flavor to marshmallow, and are added to salads, desserts, or used to decorate cakes.

**Ornamental:** In the landscape it serves as a specimen shrub, clipped hedge, espalier, screen, or small flowering tree, and its salt tolerance makes it a favored choice for coastal gardens; its fruit draws birds to the garden and the plant is seldom troubled by deer.

**Medicinal:** In ethnobotanical accounts of its cultivation and use, the fruit has traditionally been associated with folk remedies for digestive complaints such as constipation and inflammatory bowel troubles, among other traditional health uses recorded for the plant.

Feijoa is native to the subtropical highlands of southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and northern Argentina. The German botanist Friedrich Sello collected it in southern Brazil in the early nineteenth century, and it was formally described in 1859 by Otto Karl Berg under the name Feijoa sellowiana before being reclassified into the genus Acca in 1941. From South America it was carried into cultivation abroad, introduced to France in 1890 and later to New Zealand in 1920, where efforts to grow it commercially took hold.