Soncoya

Description

Annona purpurea is an edible fruit and medicinal plant in the Annonaceae family. It is native to Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America. Its common names include soncoya, sincuya, and cabeza de negro. It is a small to medium tree reaching a maximum of 6 to 10 metres (20 to 33 ft). It is deciduous with hairy leaves and large, strong-scented flowers.Its pollen is shed as permanent tetrads. The fruit is rounded, 15 to 20 centimeters wide, and covered with a felt-textured brown skin that is hard to cut open when ripe. The surface of the fruit has hooklike projections. It has many seeds which have a germination time of 1 to 6 months. Trees take about 1 to 3 years to bear and can be container grown. This species is closely related to the cherimoya, the sugar-apple and other Annonas. The soncoya is fairly obscure among Annonas; the fruit is of indifferent quality and has not attracted wide cultivation.The fruit has a texture like the soursop which some may describe as stringy or fibrous. Annona (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 Medicoto to approximately 1000 BC.Plants of the genus have several common names, including sugar-apple, soursop, and guanabana. Currently, seven Annona species and one hybrid are grown for domestic or commercial use, mostly for the edible and nutritious fruits; several others also produce edible fruits.Many of the species are used in traditional medicines for the treatment of a variety of diseases, though their efficacy has yet to be validated scientifically. Several annonacaeous species have been found to contain acetogenins, a class of natural compounds with a wide variety of biological activities.The first complete genome for a species in this genus (Annona muricata) was published in 2021.