Plant · P-489

Avocado

Persea americana

Avocado is an evergreen tree grown for its buttery, mildly oily fruit, eaten raw or as a spread, with leaves used for tea and to flavor stews and beans and a seed that yields an edible oil. Which race a tree belongs to matters as much as the species: West Indian types barely tolerate frost while Mexican-race varieties can survive real cold, so cultivar choice decides whether it lives outside the tropics. Every part but the ripe flesh is toxic - the leaves, seed and unripe fruit are dangerous to horses, birds, ruminants and rodents, so windfalls need to land inside a fenced orchard, not a paddock.