Guayaba: an American fruit under indigenous cultivation, described in 1535 and carried round the tropics

Guava is a Neotropical fruit that modern work calls semi-domesticated. Oviedo's chapter on the guayabo, written in the Caribbean and printed in full in 1851, already records the two facts the genetics later supported: wild trees are smaller than cultivated ones because the Indians take care over them, and both Indians and Christians plant them in their holdings. He also records the astringent use against diarrhoea. The plant the Spanish carried outward is now invasive in much of the tropics.