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Annona squamosa
Also called Scopapel, Custard Apple, Sugar Apple, Sweetsop, Sweet Sop, Sweetsop
In Singapore: Custard Apple, Sugar Apple, Sweetsop, Buah Nona, Seri Kaya, Anona, Nona, Bullock's Heart, 番荔枝 (Cultivated in Singapore)
Sugar apple is a small, semi-deciduous tree or shrub, 3 to 8 m tall, grown for its sweet, custard-like fruit. It needs a warm frost-free climate and grows best where summers are hot and winters stay above about 15 °C.
Annona squamosa is a small, well-branched tree or shrub from the family Annonaceae that bears edible fruits called sugar apples, sweetsops or custard apples. It tolerates a tropical lowland climate better than its relatives Annona reticulata and Annona cherimola, and is the most widely cultivated of these Annona species.
Annona squamosa is semi-(or late) deciduous, and 3 to 8 metres (10 to 26 feet) tall, similar to soursop (Annona muricata). It is a native of tropical climate in the Americas, and Spanish traders aboard the Manila galleons docking in the Philippines brought it to Asia.
Like most species of Annona, it requires a tropical or subtropical climate with summer temperatures from 25 °C (77 °F) to 41 °C (106 °F), and mean winter temperatures above 15 °C (59 °F). It is sensitive to cold and frost, being defoliated below 10 °C (50 °F) and killed by temperatures of a couple of degrees below freezing. It is only moderately drought-tolerant, requiring at least 700 millimetres (28 in) of annual rainfall, and does not produce fruit well during droughts.
It will grow from sea level to an altitude of 2,000 metres (6,600 feet) and thrives in hot dry climates, differing in its tolerance of lowland tropics from many of the other fruit bearers in the Annona family.
Annona squamosa is native to the tropical Americas, but the exact origin is unknown. It is the most widely cultivated of all the species of Annona, being grown for its fruit throughout the tropics and warmer subtropics such as in India, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, and China as far north as Suzhou since its Old World introduction in the 16th century. It is naturalized as far north as Cuba, south Florida, Mexico, Central America, and as far south as Bahia, Brazil. It is an invasive species in some areas.
Sugar-apple is 73% water, 24% carbohydrates, 2% protein, and contains negligible fat (table). In a reference amount of 100 g (3.5 oz), sugar-apple supplies 94 calories and is a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value) of vitamin C and a moderate source of manganese and vitamin B6, with no other micronutrients in significant content (table).
Cherimoya · Annona coriacea · Fleshyflower Annona · Pond apple · Wild cherimoya of Jalisco · Ilama · Mountain soursop · Sugar Apple · Soursop · Annona nutans · Annona paludosa · Annona
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Annona squamosa 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.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
