You smell a guava tree before you see it. The ripe fruit has a heavy sweet musk that carries a long way, and a tree in full fruit turns a garden into a bird feeder.
Where you’ll see it
Gardens, pasture edges and disturbed ground everywhere. It spreads readily from seed, so it turns up where nobody planted it.
What to know
A small tree with smooth, flaking, mottled bark and round green fruit that ripens to yellow, with pink or white flesh full of small hard seeds. Eat it whole, skin and all, or make juice, which is a Costa Rican staple. The competition is stiff: parakeets, magpie-jays, kinkajous and fruit flies all get there first. Pick it a day early.
