PlantFiles: Pineapple Guava, Feijoa
Acca sellowiana

This is a a beautiful, bulletproof fruiting shrub/small tree here in the SC midlands. Yesterday, for the fist time since planting it 4 yrs ago, I noticed fruit had fallen on the ground. I couldn't resist trying it on the spot, and I found the taste mildly tropical and pleasantly sweet. The texture is delicate and, texturally, similar to passion fruit. As previously noted, the flowers are edible and beautiful, and it looks great when allowed to grow into a small tree. My pineapple guava plants have been exposed to ice and temps @ 10-12f.

I planted two Coolidge variety Feijoa 4 years ago. Nary a bloom until this year.

But this Spring both plants have about 50 blooms each waiting to open. Four have already opened up.

I think I will have fruit this year!

Had a huge plant in the yard growing up in the San Gabriel Valley. It was pretty old, planted in late 1920s. always had a lot of fruit until the late 1990s when the idiots who bought the family home tore it.

Hi there, just wondering if anyone can help me with a fruitless and flowerless tree... We just bought a house and it has 3 fejoa trees in a row, like a hedge kind of thing... We are wanting to try and get them producing fruit?? Any tips for us?? We've been informed the only thing we can do is by pruning them right back... but after reading I'm not too sure if that is the right thing to do to get the trees fruiting... They are about 12ft tall and shaped... they just seem so unlike feijoa trees that I've seen?!

Any advice would be muchly appreciated please??

Thanks kindly :-)

This tree has become somewhat ubiquitous in nurseries in the area, and for many good reasons. It has the look of an olive tree in my opinion, due to narrow dark green leaves, silver leaf undersides, nicely gnarled bark, and an overall contorted growth habit. The white petals look and taste like marshmallows! This is just indescribably cool. I planted one specimen in my yard and have another in a big pot. The one in the ground is doing far better, and survived recent 25º cold snaps. (on three to four nights) without blinking. Just put it in full sunlight in a sandy mix and forget about it; it will grow into a marvelous and very "Mediterranean-looking" tree for you with zero effort. As a native plant loyalist, I rarely recommend a non-native species with as much confidence as I do this one. And it's from the New World (South America), so it's technically not all THAT foreign... It's not like it's an insidious invasive invader from the Big A's (Asia, Australia, Africa). Its growth is what I would describe as polite and not vigorous, so I feel it has no invasive potential.

A large specimen can be found in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans next to the lagoons (growing well in almost full shade, oddly enough for this heliophilic species). Another large, photogenic one is right in front of famous Laura Plantation here in Vacherie. Whole Foods Market sells the fruits occasionally.

Pineapple guavas grow well in Mesa Arizona. I have some pictures of my flowers and fruit at the following links.

http://phoenixtropicals.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=197

http://phoenixtropicals.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=260

Planted just one, in the ground, two years ago in Southern California (San Clemente). Although we get some coastal marine layer, we get very little rain, so it seems to be very drought tolerant. No pests. It has doubled in height (about 5 feet now) and we have pruned it to keep it semi-tree like. Spectacular flowers and bearing delicious fruit this year. If you want to know more, I recommend reading the Wiki page regarding this tree/shrub: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acca_sellowiana

This is an all-round ornamental and an odd-looking fruiting shrub. It grows very easily for me. Light shade seems to do best for it. I grow mine in a container that I keep in a cool place for the winter. Its leaves get rigid in the cold, but they recover their softness when brought out. Sofia, Bulgaria, 2300 feet AMSL, Z 6b.

Update April 7th, 2010: In the autumn of 2009, I planted a Pineapple Guava in Krapets, Bulgaria, which is zone 8a. Well, it has survived a bitterly cold winter with temps dipping to -3 degrees F and with fierce arctic winds, though apparently under a heavy snow cover. It is about three feet tall, and half of its branches have been broken under the weight of the snow, with the rest left intact. The leaves look half-green, half-rusty, and cling to the stems. In my opinion, this plant is alive. Will update soon.

I planted three in clay during the horrible drought of 08-09. They doubled/tripled in size and produced fruit the second year. It tasted like pineapple and strawberry mixed together. Wait until the fruit starts to drop from the tree before eating. You can give the bush a little shake and eat the ones that come down. Good news. I had three at the farm and it got down to 11F without damage. They are cold hardy for sure.

What a great plant!

I would not exactly describe them as hardy - mine (3) are young, at various sizes between seedling, and 2 feet tall. At this stage in their youth, they are a bit more sensitive to cold and overwatering than perhaps when mature, so it would be best to be gentle, and GRADUALLY introduce them to the 'limits' of what they might be able to ultimately endure. With a very lanky, branchy tendency in growth, wind can really do some damage to young plants.

That said, they are also VERY resilient, and when they do experience damage, they tend to bounce back very quickly. Mine have grown steadily. I hope to get flowers and fruit, but it should be said that even the bark and foliage is very, very attractive - all parts of the plant are quite handsome.

Definitely a rewarding plant!

What a beautiful specimen. Silvery green leaves, and it keeps gorgeous color year round in zone 7. By the way, I got fruit last year.

I used to live in Pearland, TX, just south of Houston. These were planted as a long hedge about 5 feet tall in front of a shopping center and made tons of tasty fruit and blossoms every year. And I mean tasty! Every day I drove by, from a distance, they looked like Russian Olive (eleagnus) until I saw the blooms and fruit. I just bought 3 of the plants in one gallon containers at Home Depot in Brownwood and they were very healthy and only $4.98. In north Texas, it's a good idea to plant them close to the house on the south or west side since temps down in the teens could injure or possibly kill them. They can surive temps in the upper 20s with no problem, but in Texas, you never know how low it might go. Tropical one day and Siberia the next.

They are supposed to be quite drought tolerant once established, but apparently the fruit pretty much all drops off without some water. A few deep waterings might do the trick though.

I am on the cusp of zones 9a and 9b in Florida and our water situation here is a little scary - in other words - drought. I am thinking of the Pineapple Guava for a hedge behind the native holly trees I planted after the 2004 hurricanes. I think it would be a nice accent, color and texture wise and from my research it is supposed to be drought tolerant. I'd like to know more about this plant before I invest. I don't have irrigation to this area although I can water by hand until established The flowering and fruit features are certainly a plus! Thanks.

I live on the coast in Los Angeles County (Naples, California), and purchased my Pineapple Guava [a Monrovia Nursery cultivar] as a standard in a 5 gal. can from Rogers' Gardens in Corona del Mar last year. It has doubled or perhaps tripled in size. Just a gorgeous specimen. I think I need to thin it out a bit though...some branches are looking to long and heavy. I have a tiny little garden in the back where it is growing and I do want to contain the size, although I would love for it to get about twenty feet tall and screen the neighbor's house behind us.

Feijoa fruit are an acquired taste, but make wonderful chutney, jelly, etc etc - and now a lovely sparkling wine here in NZ. What starts as a shrub can get away, and become a huge scraggly tree. We are using them as hedging as they cope well with clay soil and strong wind, both common in the Kaipara (NZ) district, and plan to prune to keep them at about 2m. They deal well with occasional frost as well.

Easy to grow here in Portland, OR. My 25 year old plant is 16' tall. Others in the neighborhood are larger. Flower petals are edible, though the fruit isn't that great (stick with Kiwis). Blooms a LOT in summer.

My tree had over one hundred flowers with fruit and they started to fall off and i now have 2 pieces of fruit and it's late august and the tree is starting to bloom.

I'm deliriously happy to rediscover this very plant, which could be grown successfully where I live. Many fond memories of childhood having this plant in the backyard. I planted one small plant on a northwest side of the property, in the past few years, it survived but haven't produced flowers. As I learned more about gardening, I realized; I haven't given this plant the optimum condition to produce flowers/fruits. Though it recieved adequate moisture, the shrub didn't get enough sun for photosynthesis.
(It's under a thick canopy of larger trees). I'm moving this plant to a better location ASAP.
6/4/07: I'm proudly announcing the flowering of my tree. Though they are few but beautiful. Looking forward to having fruits.

Purchased 1-gallon plants and planted inground, full sun. Saw first blooms after 3 years but no fruit yet. I prune mine as shrubs.
May 2010. Plants continue to do great but still no fruit. Possibly b/c I keep trimming to maintain a semi-formal shape. It makes such a pretty ornamental shrub or tree. But I don't recommend much trimming as you cheat yourself of the tasty fruit. I will plant another one and let it grow as a regular tree. Flowers are very tasty. Every time I walk buy I snatch one and put it right in my mouth.

My 5 pineapple guavas have had fruit. my problem is that they are very thin, my friend has them and they are beautiful, full and green. mine on the other hand are thin, and have a scale like fungus on them.

Hi. I seem to be having trouble finding the Feijoa plant. I live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but haven't seen it anywhere. If anyone knows where to buy some of these plants, I would greatly appreciate it if they told me where I can find one in my area.

I used to live in New Zealand myself, and every fall, everybody would be giving feijoas to friends and neighbors for 3 months at least. There was never an end of them! The climate there is absolutely perfect, which is part of why there were so many and so good. Well, the addiction is stuck with me.

Tasty Fruit & Ambrosia Flowers !
Those of you with Pineapple Guavas that have never eaten the blossom petals -- you are missing a wonderful treat. YUM! Trust me, or look it up, the fleshy part of the blossoms are indeed edible. My daughter almost wiped out all my flowers one year when she was a toddler, she couldn't get enough!

I see many comments on trees not fruiting. It's possible you don't have a self-fruitful variety. Some do fine on their own, others need a friend. Do some research before you buy, the results will be spectacular -- A good place to look is the "California Rare Fruit Growers" website -- they have a good listing of cultivars (13 of them!). I grew some in inland San Diego County, but now that I live on the coast I need a different variety -- I found they had the best info.

They take a couple of years to come into their own, so don't lose heart. Once they get going you will have more than enough.

My brother grew a Pineapple guava hedge around a 20 foot Cordyline australis in the center of a large lawn and despite the trimming into a square shape it produced a large amount of fruit. The rich black California ex-orchard soil and heavy watering with lawn fertilizer(amonium sulfate) must have helped too.
They were soooo good.....

I have a client who tells me her friends look forward to her pineapple guava fruiting because they have a party...they put crushed ice, the fruit, and tequila into the blender... haven't tried it myself, but she says it's great (not quite as healthy as the notes above I suppose but sounds interesting!)

The plant can be trained as a bush, hedge of tree. The flowers and fruit smell nice. I have received my plants from 5 different nurseries and the flowers and fruit are all some what different. The flowers run a showy white to deep red. The leaves are fairly similar and the hedge looks congruent. The fruit runs from mostly clear jelly to mostly pulp. One plants fruit has 3 pods another 4 and another 5. The flavors run from more tropical guava flavor with a hint of pineapple to lemonade(this has a thicker skin). My fruit size runs from small chicken egg to what a tennis ball looks squished (nearly so). The roots are small and tend to crowd out weeds. Most of my coworkers, friends, and my son will eat the fruit skin and all, leaving the ends. If you are sour weakling, do not eat the skin. My son at 2 would eat 3 large ones on the way to school. I have seen one website that did research and cataloged 27 or 29 types of the pineapple guava. I found another website that specialized on the pineapple guava health benefits. The skin has lots of vitamins and minerals, the pulp has a benefit to non insulin dependent diabetics, and the jelly has the same anti cancer benefits as tomatoes and blueberries.

I have 40 plants which are 2 1/2 years old. they are planted along a north west ridge bordering 2 1/2 acres. They are now 7' tall (I purchased them at 2' tall). The first year didn't get too many, but last year harvested an enormous amount, too many to eat fresh. The first year, their size was that of a thumbnail, last year they were the size of an egg.

If ever there was a fruit tree that almost all New Zealand backyards have (along with lemons and grapefruit) then feijoas are it. I grow them in the Hawke's Bay where they thrive in the warm dry climate, tolerating frost and long dry summers. Mine is the cultivar "mammoth" with big juicy fruit, it needs a pollinator, "triumph" is recommended, thou I have so many in my neighbourhood i didn't need to put one in.

We had one at the home of my childhood in Fairfield California. Half way between San Francisco and Sacramento. I loved it! The fruit was so sweet and smelled sweet too. It was next to our treehouse. I would like to have one in my yard in my present home.

I planted the Pineapple Guava on two sides of my butterfly garden here in Deltona Florida. The shrubs have been in the ground about 1 1/2 years. I just found my first flower and is it ever gorgeous. I have had one problem and that is the leaves have curled up and turned brown a few times.

I find this a really handsome tree,even without the flowers and fruit. With the dark green upper leaves and silvery backs it can look like it is glittering on a windy day.

My kids all adore the fruit, and as the rule is let them drop from the tree and collect them, they are the easiest harvest going and impossible to misjudge. I can't keep up with demand for the fruit and have just put in a second tree. As there isn't another in the neighbourhood this might improve the yield from my existing tree too by cross pollination but it is definitely reasonably self-fertile and is not a named variety. While the flowers attract birds to date the fruit hasn't.

I also find it very drought tolerant. It is in a part of the garden I don't water, and it has fruited even in drought years.

This forms a beautiful small tree or large shrub. My plant originally came in a 4" pot from the Mellinger's catalog - it has grown to an 8' shrub in about 4 years - I planted another last year, as I understand they must cross-pollinate in order to fruit.
Even without fruiting, this plant, covered in flowers, is quite a sight. The flowers, said to be edible, are not particularly flavorful, though they have a nice texture.
A very decorative, and cold hardy, tree.
Both of my plants came from the same source, and will not fruit unless I introduce pollen from another source. I swapped branches of flowers with a friend, and we both have lots of fruits this year.

We live in an outer suburb of Perth Western Australia and have just purchased a property with over 150 Feijoa trees! They are about 9 feet tall and 9 feet wide and are planted approx 12 feet apart.
It is February now, and after seeing the trees in beautiful blossom through December and January, we are thrilled to see the fruits forming. They are only small at present, but my goodness - what a lot!

Some friends and neighbors have been growing Pineapple Guavas here in Northcentral Florida, zone 8b, for years now, so I am planning to grow them too, as soon as I can clear a sunny area for my main vegetable garden and some fruit trees. They are listed in my Southern Living Garden Book as both "Feijoa sellowiana" and "Acca sellowiana," and are also listed as hardy up into the Lower South, which includes the Atlanta area.

My book says the fruit will ripen in four to five months after bloom in the Tropical South (Tampa Bay, Florida, and South along the Coasts), and five to seven months after bloom in the rest of the South. It also says it can take any amount of pruning, and there are several self-fertile, improved selections: 'Beechwood,' 'Coolidge,' and 'Nazemetz,' but cross-fertilization will produce a better crop. They also produce better in the Southwest than the Southeast, but my friends here in Northcentral Florida have quite a lot of fruit every year on their trees. But it makes sense that they would prefer the dryer climate of the Southwest, as they are originally from Southern Brazil, Paraguay, Uraguay, Argentina and the Andean highlands.

I found some research on Pineapple Guava pollination on the internet that said they are mostly allogamous--meaning they need to be cross fertilized to produce fruit--and that bees are not very efficient at pollinating them--birds are better! Thought that was interesting, as most of us try to keep birds away from our fruit trees.

My friends and neighbors have several trees, and I think I will try to find two trees of different varieties, just to make sure I get some fruit, as they can get to be quite large trees here in our mild climate and will take up quite a lot of room in my small garden. I hope to get enough fruit to make guava drinks in my blender, served ice cold, which are absolutely delicious!

I live in central Texas and found my pineapple guava in a nursery in Dallas, Tx. I have had it two years and the blooms are very pretty; however, I have not seen any fruit on it. I hope it continues to thrive here. I think it is a great tree.

I just love our Pineapple Guava tree. It is only two years old and has doubled in size, but we noticed it is losing its leaves. My Pineapple Guava has never had a blossom on it, either.

I have tried the blossoms and they are sweet and quite edible (the petals only)- good in salads, too.

This is a great plant for Southern California -incredibly drought tolerant, plants here often go without any watering for 6-8 months (that's how long we often have without a drop of rain) and no problems.

We had a horse for a while and it loved this tree, too... ate the entire top of the tree- branches and all. Since, the tree has grown a lot more full and looks better... I guess horse pruning can be a good thing.

My parents have been growing this tree for 40-plus years in Palo Alto, California (U.S.) Growing up, Mom made a wonderful jam from the fruit. Today I read that the blossoms are edible, but we haven't tried that yet.

The fruit starts to drop after the middle of September, yielding as many as 50, but averaging 30 per day. Many over 3 ounces; the largest was 3.75 oz. We cut them in half and scoop out the fruit with a spoon. First-time tasters might not be knocked out with the flavor, but it will grow on you, as many of our family and neighbors are addicted.

Today I am researching cultivation because we haven't done any fertilization. Our tree is 15 feet high and wide.

WARNING: I pruned what appeared to be barren if not dead branches. Now the branches I missed have fruit at the end, so maybe they weren't barren.

I've never grown Pineapple Guava, but I grew up in Torrance, California, across the fence from someone with a fruiting plant. My brother and I would collect the delicious fruit after it dropped into our yard. The tree was growing out of the ground (not potted).

Yesterday, I was given a Pineapple Guava bush as a birthday gift. I'm in southern California (U.S.) and my plant came without any instructions. I wonder if I could start it in a large pot on my patio.

My next door neighbor has one of these, with beautiful blooms all over it. When I first saw it I was not sure what it was, but I was able to find out the name from one of my garden books.

I have not been able to locate one in my area. I have tried several nurseries in Galveston County, Texas (U.S.) to no avail. It is on my list of "Most Wanted" for my garden. The neighbor's tree is about 9 feet tall and just beautiful. However, I don't believe it brings him as much pleasure as it would if it was in my yard. Maybe I could steal it during the night! (ha ha)

This has to be my all-time favorite fruit. I love it. My husband thinks I am mad.

I have found when the trees are mature they appreciate a good pruning in the winter and a good dose of fertilizer; this increases their yield significantly.

When living in New Zealand we had a place with about 20 mature trees. (I was in Feijoa heaven) Now in California we managed to track down a small tree and are trying to grow them again.

What can I say about our Feijoa? We have lived here for fifteen years and when we got here the tree was a bush, already twenty or thirty years old, on the top side of a railway sleeper wall. It spread over the wall like a feral sphere to the lawn four feet below. With three years of judicial pruning it became a tree, multi-trunked because of the pressure of circumstance. It is now fifteen feet high and close to thirty feet wide. The flowers are red and white, upside-down fuchsia-like bloooms, and bloom in the same season. (I take great pleasure in planting Fuchsias below it to impress my guests with those facts!)

Our marsupial possums love the fruit almost as much as we do, as does one of the world's most beautiful, if noisy birds, the banded lorikeet. The fruit have a tropical fruit salad flavour, great with ice cream, and have a wonderful aroma!

Our tree was planted as a 1-gallon baby 14 years ago. It's now about 15 feet tall, and is the focal point of my front garden. It needs very little care. It's somewhat drought-tolerant (doesn't need moist soil here), no pruning except to shape, the red flowers are beautiful, the fruit falls when ripe and isn't damaged after falling.

The fruit is delicious and very healthful. You can chose either a single trunk or multi-trunked shape. Bees and birds love this tree.

Pineapple Guava is a small tree or shrub with ornamental red flowers. The edible fruit is green with white pulp. It can be found growing in Southern Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, and is cultivated in other subtropical areas and Andean highlands.

The pulp is eaten fresh or used in juices, sherbets ice-creams, candies, and liquors. I am growing several seedlings indoors as houseplant.

Acca (syn. Feijoa) is a genus of evergreen shrubs grown for their unusual flowers and edible fruits produced in warm climates. they are tender, but frost hardy.

Pineapple Guava is a shrub with grey-green leaves for a hot, sunny situation. Flowers with purple-red petals and crimson stamens are carried in midsummer. Fruits follow in the autumn.