Baby avocado tree is a survivor

This avocado tree was started for me by a former house-mate, who grew it from an avocado pit. He suspended the pit over a glass of water by poking toothpicks into 4 quadrants, and balanced the pit on the glass so that about 3/4 of it was submerged in water. After a few weeks of sitting on the windowsill like this, the pit had split almost fully in half due to growth of the beginnings of roots below and a sprout reaching to burst out from the top of the pit. At this point, he planted the pit in potted dirt, left it in a partially sunny area on our front porch, watered and tended to it. In a few months the shoot had grown several inches tall, and soon was sprouting its first leaves.

The baby avocado plant, not even a year old yet, was moved to an outdoor balcony when I moved and was subjected t
o the horrible air quality during a particularly bad fire season in the San Fernando Valley.

This plant had a sister plant that did not survive; its leaves were fully singed by the ashes in the air from forest fires, in combination with the incredible desert heat in August in "the valley" in Los Angeles county. The remaining plant stood strong, though it lost many of its leaves. The leaves you see now are mostly all new growth over the past year. In the close-up photos you get a closer look at the small sprouts of new growth that are getting ready to unfold into new leaves.

It might not look like much now, but to finally see this new growth emerging more than a year after being exposed to the harmful fire air, it really is an amazing comeback for this little plant.


Symbolism
This is a fun one - the Aztecs believed that the avocado fruit contained aphrodisiac properties, and named it Ahacatl which means 'green testicle'. This makes sense when you examine the shape of the fruit, something I definitely never noticed until researching for this blog.

Avocados are also believed to represent love, and are thought to be a good gift between lovers. Obviously we've just learned one reason why, wink, wink.

We see avocado as an ingredient in many skin care products, as it is high in vitamin E and the oils are very soothing.