PlantFiles: Cherimoya, Custard Apple
Annona cherimola

I have had many of my spanish neighbors rave about the fruit of this tree and have heard it called everything from "ice cream tree" to "Sweet apple", I purchased one last year from tropical gardens on University Blvd in Tamarac Fl, and just this week was gifted with my first fruit, and what a wonderful fruit it is, I've never tasted anything sweeter. I guess it polinated itself cause I sure didn't. I would recomend it for the Ft. Lauderdale area.

We got a box of this fruit from California (about $6 for per large fruit). Very tasty. Sweet and creemy.

My babrsitter somehow got the plant grow from the seeds and we now have about 30 plants (2 feet tall). I gave them out to friends and hope them grow well in Austin Texas

The fruit is quite a treat, the foliage is beautiful. My sunset zone is 23/24.
This last heat wave I saw temperatures of 105 with wind which killed the growing tips and youngest leaves on three of my four trees. The wind exposed some shoots to sunburn. It has taken them a couple of weeks to recover.
The winters since planting have been unusually mild and I have packed the base of the trunks in ice to ensure they have the few chilling hours they need to get off to an early spring start.
Besides eating the fruit (do not give any to your neighbors unless you own a guard dog) the smell of the tree in bloom is heaven. The leaves have a delightful resinous/piney smell when bruised as does the freshly cut wood. The roots have their own smell delicious smell but it is my impression that the whole tree is mildly poisonous except fot the fruit.
The wood is soft and brittle so prune accordingly.
Seeds take a while to germinate and you can get them mailorder at trade winds fruit or order a cherimoya, enjoy the fruit and plant the seeds.

Not a heat loving tropical but a subtropical from the mid Andes. They do fine in coastal California placed in full sun or light shade.Protect from hot sun or reflected heat.Blooms have the scent of vanilla. A bonus.

I have nearly 100 cherimoya trees and pick and ship 4 to 7000 pounds each season and ship across the U.S. We do hand polinate from late June to the beginning of October, but then have some fruit as early as Jan thru May. Geirge
grovestand.net

This is also a favorite fruit of mine, but not one easy to get in Florida. I am one of those growing it and hoping to find a seedling that can be happy here. So far beautiful plants but no fruit. But I have only been at it a couple of years. They are outdoors through winter with no protection and no harm so far.

Wow, how nice to know this grows in the U.S.! I had sampled this lucious fruit while in southern Spain. Would love to have it again. I understand it does not ship well :(

I agree with Walter T on both the mango and cherimoya being the best fruits in the universe!

I grew up in Cuba where we had a huge cherimoya tree in the back patio that was a wonderful source of fruit all summer long and a great climbing tree for my siblings and me.

Cherimoyas grow here in Hawaii, but they don't seem to be as popular as mangoes.....maybe its all those seeds...

I know my father never climbed the tree to hand pollinate the blooms.....they just formed fruit, every year, all by themselves..or else the fruit fairies would pollinate during the night.....

A cherimoya smoothie is one of the gifts from the gods

IMHO the Cherimoya and the Mango are THE most delicious fruits on the planet when truly ripe. Both grow readily in frost free areas of S. California, like my back yard. Cherimoya does have a lot of seeds which sprout and grow readily. For several years I carefully hand pollenated many flowers and none set fruit. Last summer, mother nature set one fruit which grew to the size of a large apple. In the fall another fruit set courtesy of MN and now, not as big as a tennis ball, is still on the branch having gone thru the winter unscathed. In San Diego "winter" is a relative term. Anything under 35F is WINTER and that temperature occurs only a few nights a year and not every year. Now, mid-May, the tree is loaded with blossoms so I am hoping for a bumper crop - 2 or 3 at least!
The leaf in the photo is 5" long.

Pollination has to be done by hand at a specific time to produce fruit.