Avocado trees are not supposed to be able to grow on their own in Southern California. Here our rainfall is far less, and our rainfall pattern is completely opposite, compared to where avocados grow wild.
In most of Southern California, we average 10-16 inches of rain per year, and it almost all falls between December and March (winter). On the other hand, in the tropical latitudes where avocados first grew wild and still grow wild, the amount of rain averages at least 30 inches per year and usually over 50 inches per year. And almost all of it falls between May and October (mostly summer).
(Example of where avocados grow wild here.)
Nevertheless, you can find old avocado trees here and there surviving on only Southern California’s paltry rainfall — paltry rainfall that comes at the wrong time of year.
Here is one in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains of Los Angeles County that I made a post about a few years ago.
And today I share about one in the flats of San Juan Capistrano in Orange County. Watch this video of it first:
Context and utility of the feral avocado tree in San Juan Capistrano
A few things contribute to the independent survival of this tree. One is that it is a seedling (assuming it is a seedling) that grew up in place. When an avocado seed sprouts it sends a tap root straight down. That initial root can harvest water and nutrients. If the soil in which it grows is deep and hospitable, then who knows how long that tap root will extend?
As opposed to a potted tree that inevitably has its tap root restricted by the depth of the pot, this seedling could probably have extended its initial root many feet down. It not only lacked the restriction of a pot. It also grew in “a deep, rich, silty, alluvial soil, the deposit of a nearby creek overflowing for millennia.” Moreover, “an old orange tree in a grove close by was removed and proved to have a tap root measuring 22 feet long.”
These details come from an article written by Bob Whitsell, Alvin Lypps, and Bob Bergh in the 1986 California Avocado Society Yearbook. The article was about another remarkable avocado tree growing on the same land as the feral tree in the video.
The “Williams Avocado Tree” they called it because it was the Williams family who owned the property and planted and cared for the tree. It was even bigger than the feral tree in the video. The authors estimated its height at about 80 feet and the girth of its trunk at over four feet in diameter.
The Williams tree was productive too. In one year (1964), Lypps removed 14,000 fruit from the tree. “At least 600 more fruit were on the ground at that time,” he wrote.
The Williams fruit were small with big seeds: no good for an eating variety. But nurserymen used its seeds as rootstock, as they grew “uniformly vigorous” seedling trees.
Scouting around the area today, I can’t find the Williams tree. I’m guessing it is no longer alive.
But I wonder if the feral avocado tree in my video grew from a Williams seed. And I wonder if the seeds of this feral tree can make good seedling rootstocks too, and if cuttings from the feral tree can make good clonal rootstocks.
(More about avocado rootstocks here.)
Regardless, she’s a beauty, and an anomaly.
And thanks to Chris, a fellow Yard Posts reader, for letting me know where to find her.
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Thanks, Greg, for sharing your video of the beautiful feral tree!
Interesting on the tap root. Cool post. Thanks Greg!
Wow! This is so interesting. Thank you for creating the video, Greg!
Amazing! I live in San Juan Cap and am going to be looking for this majestic beauty in our midst. Thanks for posting!
weve started and planted hundreds of avocado trees from seed..we learned how to graft the trees too.we always heat treated the seeds first..to prevent root rot fungus, we grafted the hass variety
Thanks for the video. Ive got a question regarding avocado growers.
There is a local Haas comercial grove in SJC (San Juan Capistrano) and was wondering if growers leave avocados on for a full year or do they harvest early in the same year they developed from flowers….. do you have any idea on imported avocados on the same topic? I home avocado tree and can afford to leave the avocodos to full maturity, but a comercial grove is running a business so they have pressure to get fruit to market sooner???
Hi Al,
There are a handful of main factors that go into when a commercial avocado grower harvests. They include current prices, maturity of the variety/crop, commitments with packers, and weather. But generally speaking, growers want to harvest as soon as possible once the prices reach an attractive level.
Growers of Hass in California very rarely harvest in the same year of the crop’s flowering. Usually they start in February or March of the following year (so the fruit will have developed on the tree for about a year). But this depends on the location, in addition to the prices, as mentioned above.
One advantage that home growers have is that we don’t have to worry about logistics and storage. We pick avocados from our trees and bring them right to the kitchen counter for ripening.
Farmers have to transport the avocados and keep them cold so they don’t ripen before getting into the hands of customers; this can be very hard when it’s warm outside in the summer and the avocados are very mature and want to ripen quickly.
Imported avocados aren’t much different from local avocados in this arena, except that they tend to be harvested when the fruit is less mature so it can handle the long travel times. This is one reason that it is more likely for you to get a better tasting California avocado in a store compared to an import.
such a great post! Thanks for your investigation!
Hi Greg, I’m an Avocado grower and would be interested in obtaining some seeds to grow seedlings for rootstock. Is there anyway that you could reply to my email address and let me know about the possibility of getting some seeds. I could also try scion from the tree and I have room for a few new trees in my Grove. I live locally.
I am a native Californian. I am here in Texas. I missed the avocado trees used to call them the dancing trees because they were so oddly shaped. I have family in Torrance, California near LAX in January or so they have an abundance of avocados. I really miss that.
That’s Amazing. I remember I planted Avocado from a seed. chopped the seed on the narrow end and then placed it on the ground. 8 years later it grew and now taller it’s than our house.
I love it! Seedling avocados are so cool.
After reading this post, I swear I saw that tree while driving south back to San Diego County last weekend.
Hello Sir. I’m interested
Ntate Makosholo,
Khotso! U lula kae matsatsing ana? U phela hantle?
Carl Schmidt bought a few acres at the bottom end of my dad’s Fuerte grove in San Juan Capistrano in 1949, built a house and planted a few more trees, as well as experimenting with some of my dad’s that were already mature. He only stayed on for about 7 years. I babysat his two young boys, his third family as he was 70+ by then. There are still a few acres of my dad’s grove planted in 1937-8, but most of the space is now houses. My grandfather north of town had a huge seed tree planted in about 1915 that Calavo came to strip every year to plant new root stock. Now I just have one very lazy small Fuerte in Chula Vista that is rather disappointing…..
Hi Joan,
Thanks for writing. I love to hear this.
Your grandfather’s huge seedling tree wasn’t the Williams tree, was it?
https://www.avocadosource.com/CAS_Yearbooks/CAS_70_1986/CAS_1986_PG_103-105.pdf