Feijoa: A Story of Obsession and Belonging

’Read this book - the micro-history you didn’t know you needed, even if you don’t like feijoa!’ Liv Sisson, author of Fungi

Inspired by a personal obsession with this singular exotic fruit, Feijoa is a sweeping, global tale about the dance between people and plants - how we need each other, how we change each other, and the surprising ways certain species make their way into our imaginations, our stomachs, and our hearts.

The feijoa comes from the highlands of Southern Brazil and the valleys of Uruguay, where it was woven into indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cultures. It was scientifically named in Berlin, acclimatised on the French Riviera, and failed to make its fortune in California. Today, it is celebrated by one small town in the Colombian Andes, and has become an icon of community and nationhood in New Zealand.

Of the world’s roughly 30,000 edible plant species, only around 150 are now cultivated for human consumption. Most of those were domesticated hundreds or thousands of years ago, but feijoas are among only a handful of plants that have made this journey from the wild to the orchard in the last few generations, providing a rare opportunity to watch, up close, the myriad ways plants seduce us.

Feijoa is a book about connection. Between people and plants, between individuals, between cultures, across disciplines - it celebrates the ways our lives and loves intersect in surprising ways.

Kate Evans is an award-winning journalist and nature writer from New Zealand. Her work has been published in The Guardian, The Observer, Scientific American, National Geographic, Undark, and BioGraphic. She is a regular contributor to New Zealand Geographic magazine and has won multiple national media awards for science and environmental journalism and feature writing. She has also worked as a television producer and video journalist for the BBC, ABC, TVNZ, and the Washington Post, reporting from West Africa, Indonesia, the Whanganui River and the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings.