GUAVA (from the Mexican guayaba)  , the name applied to the fruits of species of Psidium, a genus belonging to the natural order Myrtaceae . The species which produces the bulk of the guava fruits of commerce is Psidium Guajava, a small tree from 15 to 20 ft. high, a native of the tropical parts of 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 known and cultivated . The variety of which the fruits are most valued is that which is sometimes called the white guava (P . Guajava, var. pyriferum) . The fruits are pear-shaped, about the size of a hen's egg, covered with a thin bright yellow or whitish skin filled with soft pulp, also of a light yellowish tinge, and having a pleasant sweet-acid and somewhat aromatic flavour . P . Guajava, var. pomiferum, produces a more globular or apple-shaped fruit, sometimes called the red guava . The pulp of this variety is mostly of a darker colour than the former and not of so fine a flavour, therefore the first named is most esteemed for eating in a raw state; both, however, are used in the preparation of two kinds of preserve known as guava jelly and guava cheese, which are made in the West Indies and imported thence to England; the fruits are of much too perishable a nature to allow of their importation in their natural state . Both varieties have been introduced into various parts of India, as well as in other countries of the East, where they have become perfectly naturalized . Though of course much too tender for outdoor planting in England, the guava thrives there in hothouses or stoves .

Psidium variabile (also known as P . Cattleyanum), a tree of from 10 to 20 ft. high, a native of

Brazil (the Ara96. or Ara9a de Praya), is known as the purple guava . The fruit, which is very abundantly produced in the axils of the leaves, is large, spherical, of a fine deep claret colour; the rind is pitted, and the pulp is soft, fleshy, purplish, reddish next the skin, but becoming paler towards the middle and in the centre almost or quite white . It has a very agreeable acid-sweet flavour, which has been likened to that of a strawberry .