Short answers, pulled from the story.
The avocado (Persea americana) is an evergreen tree in the laurel family, Lauraceae. Its fruit is botanically a large single-seeded berry, not a drupe, with smooth buttery golden-green flesh when ripe.
The avocado is native to the Americas, with a range from Mexico to Peru. The oldest known avocado remains were found at Huaca Prieta on the northern coast of Peru, where humans ate avocados as early as 10,500 years ago.
The Hass accounts for 80% of cultivated avocados worldwide and produces fruit year-round. Every Hass tree descends from a single mother tree raised by Rudolph Hass, a mail carrier of La Habra Heights, California, who patented it in 1935.
Mexico is by far the world's largest avocado producer. In 2024, world production reached 11.2 million tonnes, with Mexico supplying 25% of the total, followed by Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Indonesia.
It takes roughly 70 litres of applied fresh water to grow a single avocado, about 283 litres per kilogram, according to the Water Footprint Network. In Chile's main growing region the figure rises to about 320 litres per avocado, and avocados need three times the water of apples and eighteen times that of tomatoes.
Yes. Avocado leaves, bark, skin, and pit can severely harm or kill animals including cats, dogs, cattle, goats, rabbits, birds, fish, and horses. The leaves contain persin, a toxic fatty acid derivative that can cause colic and death in horses, and the ASPCA lists avocado as toxic to horses.
The word avocado comes from the Spanish aguacate, which derives from the Nahuatl word āhuacatl and ultimately the proto-Aztecan pa:wa. The earliest known English use is attested from 1697 as avogato pear, later avocado pear, a term sometimes corrupted to alligator pear.