Oliver Moore and Craig Hepworth in north FL said they’ve had multiple trees that recover and then show symptoms again for years before finally succumbing.
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I just haven’t noticed any beetles, and knock on wood but my pest pressure (outside of the occasional ant/aphid combo) is basically zero. Also maybe I’m just hoping the former haha
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Here’s some info specific to your state, which of course doesn’t mention avocados but the symptoms are similar in all the trees that can get it:
https://www.ncforestservice.gov/forest_health/forest_health_laurelwiltfaq.htm
Unfortunately it does look like you’re on the edge of the area it’s been detected:
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I’m enjoying catching up on your posts! In my VERY limited experience (two Hamada scions grafted onto my mature but ASBVd-infected multi-variety tree last year), Hamada appears more cold-hardy than Bacon (of which two scions were also grafted onto the same tree last year), although Bacon was far more vigorous. However, after a couple consecutive 24 degree nights, Bacon showed a fair bit of damage while Hamada was unscathed. Sadly, one of the Hamada grafts is showing severe disease symptoms this year, but the other looks fine–and both have fruitlets developing. No fruit on the Bacon.
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It’s great to see you on the forum, @TucsonKen! I would love to hear how the fruit set looks for some of your more vigorous new varieties like Jade. My Jade has just finished flowering and it’s too soon to be sure about fruit set, but at least some of the flowers didn’t drop right away, so maybe I’ll get to try that one finally.
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I’m very pleased with how Jade is doing on my multi-variety tree. The growth rate has been good, it flowered well, and has set quite a bit of fruit.
To those who don’t know me, I’m a backyard hobbyist trying to figure out what varieties will do well in Tucson. Over the past few years I’ve stubbed and grafted a mature Wilma, adding more than 40 varieties (including recommended seedlings), around 30 of which are still alive. Maybe half of those range from vigorous to “okay.” To make things more complicated, one of the scions I added was infected with ASBVd (Avocado Sunblotch Viroid disease), so now when failures occur I can’t be certain how much is due to the disease and how much is due to local conditions.
Here’s the tree:
…and some of the fruitlets:
Jade:
Opal:
Wilma (a few sprouts escaped getting pruned off):
Aravaipa:
One of the disease symptoms is dwarfed, misshapen fruits, often with skin lesions. I think it can see lesions starting on these Mexicola Grande fruitlets:
I grafted a couple of Hamada scions, and one shows heavy vegetative symptoms…
…but so far, the fruit looks okay:
A couple of disappointments–Mexicola has been one of the most vigorous growers and set a lot of fruit–but pretty much all of it has dropped. Duke flowered quite early and looked promising with many pinihead-sized fruitlets, but as best I can tell, all have dropped:
A seedling from Magdalena, Mexico is very vigorous and produced a few flowers, but I can only see one small fruit which doesn’t look promising. Ditto for Grande Negra. Time will tell whether anything makes it to maturity, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
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I also have been disappointed with Duke in our greenhouse. It has easily 5x the biomass of any other variety, maybe 20x more than some of the small grafts mentioned below, and it has flowered profusely for three straight years. This year it probably had at least ten thousand flowers. Right now I count only four flowers that closed a couple weeks ago and have neither fallen off nor swelled into fruitlets. That’s it! Apparently the large trees in Oroville failed to set any fruit last year, so I’m thinking it may be one of those varieties that’s extra sensitive to the overnight lows being too cold during pollination/pollen tube formation.
Meanwhile, Brissago had only a few dozen flowers and currently has seven clear/swelling fruitlets and a handful other flowers still holding on, trying to make up their minds.
Linh is another one of the smaller grafts, and had nearly 100% of the flowers hold initially, with a couple dozen already starting to swell. With this anomalously high initial fruit set, I was thinking it might make some cukes or perhaps have flowers that easily self-pollinate (where individual flowers remain pollen receptive until after shedding pollen).
As for Jade, it has always grown vigorously for me, and the graft outside did survive our severe freeze in January with no protection other than mounding some wood chips above the graft, but it is looking like there may not be much, if any fruit that set. It flowered even more profusely than Duke (albeit on a much smaller single graft), with multiple large panicles on each branch tip and over a dozen branches. Right now I count about a dozen flowers that haven’t dropped, but most of those only closed a few days ago. All the earliest flowers have fallen without setting fruit.
This waiting period to see if I get some fruit keeps bringing to my mind this excerpt from The Avocado: Botany, Production, and Uses:
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I live in Oroville, and have recently become interested in creating my own tree from the source. I went by a few weeks back to see if there were any fruits either on the tree or on the ground and found none. Didn’t really know what that meant (either wrong time of year or collectors had gleaned all of them), other than me needing to come back later.
The Duke may not even be a worthwhile addition to my collection at this point, but I’d really like to be able to grow out a duke seedling and then graft Duke on top.
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If you live nearby it sounds worthwhile even if it’s a shy bearer, or inconsistent. Just cool to get a clone of a tree with longevity in the immediate area. I would do the same if I were you
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Right now there should be pea-sized or slightly larger fruitlets on the tree. It starts ripening in late August in early years with peak season being more like October or even November for later years. It is generally finished by December.
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Fourth time is the charm? This seedling of Mexicola Grande (#25) has stubbornly grown back after three winters now, with each of the abandoned/dead trunks leaving a stump as a memento.
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It’s been almost two weeks since most of the in-ground greenhouse trees finished flowering, and a few fruitlets have begun to form. Figure I’d share what the initial fruit set looks like (understanding that many of these will likely be aborted in later abscissions). The number in the last column is my very non-scientific off-the-cuff guess at the total number of individual flowers for each variety.
| cultivar | current fruitlet count | total flowers (est) |
|---|---|---|
| Aravaipa | 5 | 50 |
| Brissago | 10 | 45 |
| Duke | 7 | 10,000 |
| Jade | 3 | 2,000 |
| Joey | 0 | 500 |
| Linh | 28 | 100 |
| Long South Gate | 0 | 15 |
| Stewart | 3 | 50 |
| Teague | 0 | 0 |
| Walter Hole | 120 (est) | 3,000 |
The differences among them are pretty huge! Now to see how many of these hold to the end.
A few examples…
Brissago (stems have become a lot thicker but fruitlets not swelling yet):
Linh:
Walter Hole:
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Mine also has survived under the mulch layer. Everything above it was dead. The Duke graft also survived. Happy about that.
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My dad went to home depot and found a Mexicola Stuart they claimed to be cold hardy to 10°F. Guess what we have now:
Also, just before this he went to a nursery that was selling Gem. Guess what we have now:
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That’s a somewhat confusing cultivar name. “Mexicola” is a cultivar, “Stewart” is a cultivar, but I’ve never heard of “Mexicola Stuart” before. This appears to be the main place using this name, and I wonder if it might just be Stewart?
There used to be a 40 ft tree at 329 Howard Dr Santa Clara. Right next to Apple new headquarters. It was fully loaded every year with bushels upon bushels of large bright green avacados. Wish i could go back in time 30 years and get scions there.
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Funny you find the Urban Tree Farm, they’re a local nursery I buy most of my fruit trees from, the lastest being a Utah Giant cherry.
Yes, that’s what I thought. Anyway, the Home Depot thinks otherwise:
I see that they also use both spellings (Stewart and Stuart), to add even more confusion. I think it shows another example of people treating “Mexicola” as meaning “Mexican type that ripens black,” rather than a distinct cultivar name, so they are treating Stewart as a type of “Mexicola”… my guess is your tree is what most nurseries just call “Stewart.”
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I didn’t even notice that. Must be the Latin name 
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