GUAVA, the name applied to the fruits of species of Psidium, a genus of the Myrtle family (Myrtaceae) . The species which produces the bulk of the guava fruits of commerce is P. Guajava, a small tree from 15 to 20 ft. high, a native of tropical America and the West Indies. It bears short-stalked ovate or oblong leaves, with strongly marked veins, and covered with a soft tomentum or down. The flowers are borne on axillary stalks, and the fruits vary much in size, shape and colour, numerous forms and varieties being cultivated. The variety of which the fruits are most valued is the white guava (P. Guajava, var. pyriferuin). The fruits are pear-shaped, about the size of a hen's egg, covered with a thin bright yellow skin filled with soft pulp, also light yellowish and having a pleasant sweet-acid and aromatic flavour. P. Guajava, var. pomi f erum, produces a more globular or apple shaped fruit, the red guava. The pulp of this variety is darker than the former and not of so fine a flavour, therefore the first named is most esteemed for eating; both, however, are used in the preparation of preserves known as guava jelly and guava cheese, which are made in the West Indies and imported thence to England; the fruits are too perishable to allow of their importa tion in their natural state. Both varieties have been introduced into various parts of the East where they have become naturalized.
P. variabile (also known as P. Cattleyanum), a tree of from 10 to 20 ft. high, a native of Brazil (the Araca or Araca de Praya), is the purple or strawberry guava. The fruit, which is abundantly produced in the axils of the leaves, is large, spherical, of a fine deep claret colour; the rind is pitted, and the pulp soft, fleshy, purplish, reddish next the skin, but becoming paler towards the middle and in the centre almost or quite white. It has an agreeable flavour, which has been likened to that of a straw berry. At the time of the Spanish discovery the guava was in cultivation from Peru northward to Mexico. In the United States guavas are grown in Florida and California.