The two trees that I mailed to myself from Florida appear to have survived the journey (a little worse for the wear), and I’ve repotted them so they can settle into their new home:
And here’s the description copied from the Instagram post above:
Presenting ‘Jade’, the newest cold-hardy avocado variety. These fruits are from a seedling tree which is making its first-ever crop of fruit this year, and wow are they fantastic.
A number of us here in North Florida have been planting out seeds from good named varieties of cold-hardy avocado. This mixing & matching of genes has produced some good-fruiting new avocado trees, but one young seedling tree in particular really caught our attention this year with its superior fruits. It is clearly worth propagating, so we gave it the variety name, ‘Jade’. The black-skinned fruits of ‘Jade’ are larger than many of the cold hardy Mexican-subspecies varieties (we weighed one at 5.6 oz), with a good flesh-to-seed ratio, and an outstanding flavor. The taste has the rich, oily flavor of other Mexican varieties, and a creamy, mayonaise-like texture. The thin edible skin is pleasant-flavored, with little of the piney flavors some types have.
My friend Oliver brought several ‘Jade’ fruits to an avocado-growing workshop he presented this week, including this exciting new variety at a tasting table with samples of a number of other cold-hardy avocado varieties that are currently ripe. All the avocado samples were delicious, but most people’s favorite was ‘Jade’. A number of attendees asked if they could buy a ‘Jade’ tree, and we had to explain to them, “Right now there’s only one tree in the whole world of this variety, and you’re among the first people who’ve gotten to taste its fruits!” There’s one cloud over this exciting new cultivar: the owner of the land where the ‘Jade’ tree is growing is in the process of listing the property for sale. We will likely lose access to this outstanding tree, and if the new owners don’t find value in having fruit trees, they could remove it.
So the day after the avocado workshop, Oliver and I drove out to the property on a mission to rescue the ‘Jade’ avocado, and we attempted a number of methods to propagate the tree. Hopefully we’ll be successful, and this outstandingly promising new avocado cultivar won’t get lost, so many more people can enjoy its rich, creamy fruits in future years.