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Annona
Annona is a genus of about 166 mostly tropical trees and shrubs in the custard apple family, including commonly grown members such as cherimoya, soursop, sugar apple and atemoya. They are grown mainly for their edible fruit and need warm, frost-free conditions.
Annona or Anona (from Taíno annon) is a genus of flowering plants in the pawpaw/sugar apple family, Annonaceae. It is the second largest genus in the family after Guatteria, containing approximately 166 species of mostly Neotropical and Afrotropical trees and shrubs.
The generic name derives from anón, a Hispaniolan Taíno word for the fruit. Paleoethnobotanical studies have dated Annona exploitation and cultivation in the Yautepec River region of Mexico to approximately 1000 BC. Plants of the genus have several common names, including sugar-apple, soursop, anona, cherimoya and guanábana.
The compound annonacin and dozens of other acetogenins contained in the seeds and fruit of some members of Annonaceae such as Annona muricata (soursop) are neurotoxins and are one of the causes of a Parkinson-like neurodegenerative disease. The only group of people known to be affected by this disease live on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe and the problem presumably occurs with the consumption of plants containing annonacin. The disorder is a so-called tauopathy associated with a pathologic accumulation of tau protein in the brain. Experimental results published in 2007 demonstrated for the first time that the plant neurotoxin annonacin is responsible for this accumulation.
Cherimoya · Annona coriacea · Fleshyflower Annona · Pond apple · Wild cherimoya of Jalisco · Ilama · Mountain soursop · Sugar Apple · Soursop · Annona nutans · Annona paludosa · Annona
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Annona by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
