page_title: Cherimoya
section_title: Pollination
hierarchical_section_title: Cherimoya / Ecology / Pollination
caption_attribution_description: English: Sprouts emerging from cherimoya seeds, from a supermarket fruit in North Carolina.
context_page_description: The cherimoya, also spelled chirimoya and called chirimuya by the Inca people, is an edible fruit-bearing species of the genus Annona from the family Annonaceae. They were believed to be native to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile, spreading through cultivation to the Andes and Central America. But they have been found to have originated in Central America.
  Cherimoya is grown in tropical regions throughout the world, and in Spain, where it is widely consumed. It is grown in the southern provinces of Granada and Málaga. It is also grown in Italy, in the southern province of Reggio Calabria. It is in the same genus, Annona, as soursop.
  American writer Mark Twain called the cherimoya "the most delicious fruit known to men". The creamy texture of the flesh gives the fruit its secondary name, the "custard apple".
context_section_description: The flowers are hermaphroditic and have a mechanism to avoid self-pollination. The short-lived flowers open as female, then progress to a later, male stage in a matter of hours. This requires a separate pollinator that not only can collect the pollen from flowers in the male stage, but also deposit it in flowers in the female stage.
  Studies of insects in the cherimoya's native region as its natural pollinator have been inconclusive; some form of beetle is suspected.
  Quite often, the female flower is receptive in the early part of the first day, but pollen is not produced in the male stage until the late afternoon of the second day. Honey bees are not good pollinators, for example, because their bodies are too large to fit between the fleshy petals of the female flower. Female flowers have the petals only partially separated, and the petals separate widely when they become male flowers. So, the bees pick up pollen from the male flowers, but are unable to transfer this pollen to the female flowers. The small beetles which are suspected to pollinate cherimoya in its land of origin are much smaller than bees.
  For fruit production outside the cherimoya's native region, cultivators must either rely upon the wind to spread pollen in dense orchards or else use hand pollination. Pollinating by hand requires a paint brush. Briefly, to increase the fruit production, growers collect the pollen from the male plants with the brush, and then transfer it to the female flowers immediately or store it in the refrigerator overnight. Cherimoya pollen has a short life, but it can be extended with refrigeration.
caption: Cherimoya sprouts emerging
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