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around Guimar there are occasional groups of five to 10 trees, planted
to produce fruit for the market. Not much of an industry. And near
this two are the only two plantings of grafted trees, in orchard form,
which we saw - and we assume we saw everything as we were in the hands
of our friend Ing. Garcia Cabezón who is doing all he can to encourage
avocado cultivation in the Canaries.

The development of grafted varieties has been one of the many
services of the Jardin de Aclimatación de Orotava. It was commended
by don Juan Bolinaga, a horticulturist from northern
Spain who was in charge of this garden for about 40 years. He has retired,
as of some 5 years ago; we went to see him in Puerto de la Cruz, a
couple of miles from the garden. He had a grafted avocado in his back
yard. It looked to me as though it might be Puebla.

The present situation is this: They have a small nursery at the
Jardin de Aclimatación where they are propagating and selling budded
avocado trees. They have Fuerte. They have a local seedling which
Ing. Garcia Cabezón came from one of the seeds he sent from California
some years ago. He thinks it may be a Fuerte seedling. I am inclined
to believe he is right. He has named this Jeva. It has not yet produced fruit outside the garden, so far as I know,
so its commercial value is not fully established. There is another
tree in the garden which they are propagating and which he calls Java.
This is obviously a Guatemalan - I saw half grown fruits and
smelled the leaves - and it is not clear whether it reached here as
a grafted tree from California or grow from a California seed. The
only other variety which has been propagated to any extent is a
West Indian seedling which originated on the island of Las Palmas, and
which has been named

The two small commercial orchards near Guimar, totalling about
250 trees in all, are made up of Fuerte and Jema and Java. In the
outskirts of Santa Cruz de Tenerife Don Sr Fumero who has a
fine banana plantation (a fairly large one; in the Canaries if you
have a city lot 100 x 150 feet, there are 100 ft devoted to commercial
production of Cavendish bananas) had about 150 seedling West Indian
avocados scattered over his farm. He has been topworking these and
now has about 110 grafted trees, nearly all Fuertes. As far as I was
able to learn, this just about ends the account of commercial avocado
growing in the Canary Islands.