Joseph Elmer Upton (abt. 1905 - abt. 1995)

Ancestors

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Biography

The tree was planted in 1926, during the Coolidge Administration, after Rudolph Hass, a 33-year-old Pasadena postman, bought it from A.R. Rideout, a Whittier nurseryman. Hass planted it and a couple of dozen other assorted seedlings on his 1 1/2-acre plot on West Road. The Hass "ranch," as the family called it, was one of many small hobby farms that dotted the La Habra Heights area.

The name "Hass" rhymes with pass, not hah-ss, as most people pronounce it. That mispronunciation may account for the fact that some supermarket produce managers insist on spelling it H-a-a-s.

Hass planned to use the seedling as root stock on which to graft other varieties of avocado tree buds. But the grafts did not take, and Hass gave up. By 1931, he was planning to cut it down.

There are several versions of how the tree was saved.

Joseph E. Upton was living with his wife, Robbie, in the small house on the Hass place in exchange for taking care of the avocado trees.

As Upton, 86, recalls, he and his wife had been eating the fruit from the uncooperative seedling tree, which was then 5 years old, and thought it was delicious. True, the skin was dark purple, almost black, thick and rough, not like the thin green skins of the then-dominant Fuerte avocado variety. But the flesh of the fruit was creamy and not fibrous, with high oil content and a nutty taste.

"I told him: 'Mr. Hass, that's good fruit,' " Upton said. " 'You should try it.' "

Hass did and realized the Uptons were right.

Others say it was Hass' children who first brought the tree's special fruit to their father's attention.

"It was all just an accident," Upton said. "Not to take anything away from Mr. Hass; he was a fine man, and he had a fine family. But he didn't actually propagate anything. It just happened."

Sources

• https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-03-29-me-373-story.html