Manoa Sweet

'Manoa Sweet' was developed by Henry Y. Nakasone at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and introduced in 1963, and it is the best known of the Hawaiian sweet-type acerolas. It was bred specifically so that home gardeners would have an acerola that could be eaten fresh, since the wild and seedling types are too sour for most palates. The tree is upright and spreading, reaches around 15 ft, and is described in the Hawaiian literature as very productive with excellent yields. It is maintained as accession HMAL 1 in the USDA-ARS acerola collection at Hilo, Hawaii, which is the reference planting for the Hawaiian named clones. Outside Hawaii it is a collector's cultivar, propagated by cuttings and traded between rare-fruit growers in Florida, California and Hawaii.