Description/Taste
The Fuerte avocado is the quintessential avocado, with its green color, pear-like form, and size ranging from six to twelve ounces. It has a rich, pale green interior and a smooth, medium-thin skin that peels readily. It’s slightly fatty, with a rich, creamy flavor and hints of hazelnut, and it’s still widely regarded as the greatest avocado. The Fuerte avocado tree is huge and spreading, and its leaves have a strong anise scent when crushed, making it one of the more cold-hardy types.

The tree’s fruit set is unpredictable, as some trees never seem to produce much fruit while others do, and it has a tendency to alternate in bearing, producing an adequate harvest every other year, depending on weather conditions at setting time and other variables.

Avocado trees come in a variety of bloom varieties. Type A avocados have female blooms in the morning and male pollen-producing blossoms in the afternoon, but Type B avocados, such as the Fuerte, have the opposite. Because more pollen is available, fruit set in Fuerte avocado trees frequently improves considerably when the trees are interplanted with kinds that have Type A flowers. When temperatures aren’t perfect for fruit set, Fuerte avocado trees may produce little, narrow seedless fruits called “cukes,” which can be picked and sold as cocktail avocados.

Unlike most fruits, avocados do not ripen on the tree; instead, they begin to ripen once picked, and their sugar content diminishes as they grow. When the fruit is ripe, the skin remains green and the fruit yields to light pressure.

Current Facts
The Fuerte avocado is the original high-quality California avocado, and its color and texture, as well as the shape of its fruit, weight, and size, are commonly used to judge other types. Along with zutano and reed avocados, it is classified as a green-skinned type because of its green tint when ripe and thin skin, which renders it more vulnerable to diseases. Mexican, Guatemalan, and West Indian avocados are the three races that make up the avocado species. While each has its own characteristics, cross-pollination allows for the creation of an infinite number of variants.

The avocado Fuerte is a cross between Mexican and Guatemalan varieties. Avocados, formally known as Persea americana Mill, are part of the Lauraceae, or Laurel family, which contains plants that yield edible cinnamon, camphor, sassafras, and bay leaf.

Nutritional Value
Avocados have the highest concentrations of protein, potassium, magnesium, folic acid, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, biotin, pantothenic acid, vitamin E, and vitamin K of any fruit. Avocados are especially unique in that they contain monounsaturated fats like oleic acid, which may help prevent breast and prostate cancer. These fatty acids may also help lower LDL cholesterol while increasing HDL cholesterol levels in the body.

Applications
Avocados are commonly used fresh in salads or dips because of their creamy flesh. Avoid direct heat, such as broiling, by cooking the avocados relatively quickly or adding them at the end of long-cooked recipes. Avocados’ high fat content complements acidic fruits and vegetables like citrus, tomatoes, and pineapple, as well as acidic sauces.

The meat can also be used as a butter substitute and spread over toast or in sandwiches. Try topping a chicken penne pasta dish with thick slices of Fuerte avocado just before serving, mashing a Fuerte avocado with sour cream and lemon juice to spread on crackers, or combining baby spinach leaves, slices of Fuerte avocado, roasted pecan nuts, and grilled prosciutto to make a tasty side salad.

Avocados should be kept at room temperature until ripe, as refrigerated avocados will not continue to ripen. Whole ripe avocados can keep in the refrigerator for two to three days, whereas chopped avocados will only last a day or two.

Ethnic/Cultural Info
This variety was given the name Fuerte, which means “strong” or “hardy” in Spanish, since it withstood the great freeze of 1913 in Los Angeles, California. In March of 1914, J. T. Whedon obtained fifty of the first budded Fuerte avocado trees from the West India Gardens and planted them on his Yorba Linda property in place of types that he had initially ordered but that had frozen in the nursery the previous year. Whedon’s was the first Fuerte avocado orchard in California, and there are now hundreds of them.

The Fuerte avocado was the foundation of the California avocado industry, and it remained the mainstay of California avocados until the 1930s, when it was superseded by the Hass avocado, which had a thicker peel and could be sent to far-flung markets.

Geography/History
Carl Schmidt, a twenty-one-year-old American explorer, came to southern Mexico in 1911 on behalf of the West Indian Gardens nursery in Altadena, California, in quest of quality avocados. He collected budwood from approximately thirty avocado tree varieties in Atlixco, Mexico, numbered them, and shipped them back to Altadena. The majority of the buds refused to adjust to the soil and environment, but “No. 15” thrived and produced superb fruit. The Fuerte avocado is named after that cultivar.