Plant · P-507

Mamey Sapote

Pouteria sapota

Mamey Sapote is a Central American tree grown for its large, football-shaped fruit, whose dense salmon-pink flesh tastes sweet with a faint almond note and is eaten fresh or blended into shakes and ice cream. The seed is a second yield in its own right, pressed for an oil used in chocolate-making, soap and skin ointments. Almost everything besides the ripe flesh is hazardous - the seed is cyanogenic, the leaves are reported poisonous, and the milky sap is caustic enough to burn skin and eyes, so pruning debris and windfalls need to stay away from stock. Like most of its family it cannot take real cold, with damage starting near freezing and death around 22 F.