Hass

I love the taste of avocado. The store where I shop sells the Hass variety. Most grocery stores sell Hass avocados. There are dozens of avocado varieties, but Hass is the most common variety. The Hass avocado tree produces fruit year round and accounts for 80% of cultivated avocados in the world. You may have never thought about it, but why is it called a Hass avocado? Who or what is Hass?

According to Wikipedia,

All 'Hass' trees are descended from a single "mother tree" raised by a mail carrier named Rudolph Hass, of La Habra Heights, California. Hass patented the productive tree in 1935. The "mother tree", of uncertain subspecies, died of root rot and was cut down in September, 2002.

Rudolph Hass quit school after finishing the 10th grade and went to work. He tried to enlist in the Army during WW1 but was rejected due to a heart murmur. In 1923, he got a job selling men’s socks and ties door-to-door. In 1925, he got a job with the Pasadena, California post office for 25 cents an hour.

In 1925, after reading a magazine article about growing avocados, Hass used all his money plus a loan from his sister to buy a 1.5 acre avocado grove. The trees were a mixture of varieties: Fuerte, Lyon, Puebla, Nabal. Fuerte trees were considered the best at the time. Hass purchased and planted avocado seeds and when the seedlings were strong enough, he hired a professional grafter named Mr. Caulkins to take cuttings from the Fuerte trees and graft them onto the new trees. All but three grafts “took”. The three failures were re-grafted. One tree rejected the second graft. Hass asked Caulkins to cut it down, but Caulkins advised Hass that it was a strong tree and he should “leave it alone and see what happens.” And Hass did.

The seed that produced that avocado tree had already been cross pollinated by nature before Hass acquired it, so the subspecies of avocado is not known. When the seedling was only 14 inches tall it began producing walnut size fruit. Fuerte trees rarely produced fruit that early. The seedling grew more rapidly and produced more fruit than the Fuerte grafts. The Hass family agreed that the new variety tasted as good, if not better better than the Fuerte avocado.

Hass patented his “Hass” avocado tree and made arrangements with a nursery to sell seedlings, but the patent was widely violated. Growers would buy one tree and use it to graft all the trees in their orchard. Hass made less than $5000 over the life of the patent (17 years).

So the next time you’re sitting at your favorite bar sipping a cold beer and noshing on tortilla chips and guac, consider raising a toast to a California mailman named Rudolph Hass for discovering and cultivating the Hass avocado – the principle ingredient in that oh-so-tasty guacamole dip.