avocada

At a distance it had the appearance of one entire orchard of fruit trees, where were mingled together the pyramidal orange, in fruit and in flower, the former in all its stages from green to dropping ripe, the citron, lemon, and lime trees, the stately, glossy leaved star apple, the golden shaddock and grape fruit, with their slender branches bending under their ponderous yellow fruit, the cashew, with its apple like those of the cities of the plain, fair to look at, but acrid to the taste, to which the far famed nut is appended like a bud, the avocada, with its brobdignag pear, as large as a purser's lantern, the bread fruit, with a leaf, one of which would have covered Adam like a bishop's apron, and a fruit for all the world in size and shape like a blackamoor's head; while for underwood you had the green, fresh, dew spangled plantain, round which in the hottest day there is always a halo of coolness, the coco root, the yam and granadillo, with their long vines twining up the neighbouring trees and shrubs like hop tendrils, and peas and beans, in all their endless variety of blossom and of odour, from the Lima bean, with a stalk as thick as my arm, to the mouse pea, three inches high, the pineapple, literally growing in, and constituting, with its prickly leaves, part of the hedgerows, the custard apple, like russet bags of cold pudding, the cocoa and coffee bushes, and the devil knows what all, that is delightful in nature besides; while aloft, the tall graceful cocoa nut, the majestic palm, and the gigantic wild cotton tree, shot up here and there like minarets far above the rest, high into the blue heavens.

Michael Scott - Tom Cringle's Log