Hawaiian Avocados

The post describes the avocados I came across during my vacation on Big Island in November 2022.

I stayed in a cabin around Captain Cook area. The cabin was on an avocado farm planted mostly with Sharwil. I picked a couple of fruits but none got ripe during my stay. Here is a Sharwil on the tree.

I also found a couple of trees with large round avocados and the owner told me that these should be Linda. Here they are on the tree.

The fist three avocados I bought were from the Cook’s Bounty fruit stand. They were longer, lighter in the outer green color and more textured that the Sharwil fruits. I couldn’t figure out what they were for sure, but they could be Beshore. These were very nice fruits, high oil and high flavor with small seed.

At the ChoiceMart in Captain Cook i found a big pile of Daily 11 together with Sharwil (in the background, in the image below).

Daily 11 is a huge fruit, as seen in the image below. Unfortunately all were too hard, and I wasn’t going to stay here long enough to try one here.

At the Ka’u (Na’alehu) farmers market I bought a seedling avocado fruit with a textured green skin and the black Malama fruit.

On the same day I also found a round green avocado at a Hilo supermarket.

These three avocados, the round one, Malama, and the green textured one I was able to taste on the same day. Here they are next to each other, with Malama on the right.

These all were excellent but distinct in the flavors and textures. The round one was the most intense with the highest oil content and medium dense structure. The green structured one had the least oil content but nice flavor and dense flesh. Malama had the softest flesh, but very good flavor and oil content. The next picture reflects my preference based on how much I consumed from each of these while tasting. The small round one was the clear winner.

Later I got three more avocados from Cook’s Bounty fruit stand, two of which seemed to be Sharwil. They are excellent avocados. Somehow I didn’t take their pictures. But the third avocado was another roundish green. This time the stone was taking most of the space in the fruit. Never the less, the flesh quality was excellent with high oil content and delectable flavor. This is probably a seedling.

And the last avocado I purchased was a medium size black fruit from the Kona farmers market. While it looks like a small Malama, I don’t believe it is. The flesh is much denser, the flavor was less intense, and the seed was very large. Still a pretty good seedling fruit.

In conclusion, I have not met a boring avocado on Big Island in my 10 days here. All were very good to excellent, but some had low flesh to seed ratios.