Kauaʻi record · kba_plant_psidium_guajava
Common guava
Psidium guajava
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About Common guava
Common guava (Psidium guajava) is an introduced tree treated as naturalized on Kauaʻi by Bishop Museum’s 2025 checklist and the 2026 Smithsonian checklist. Current extent is unassessed. An introduced, naturalized tropical fruit tree that persists outside cultivation and can recruit in disturbed vegetation, open secondary forest, forest edges, roadsides, pastures, and near former habitation. Its fleshy fruits are eaten by people and animals, enabling seed movement away from parent trees. The 2025 Bishop Museum checklist establishes naturalized presence on Kauaʻi; it does not by itself quantify forest abundance, trend, or ecological effect.
Kauaʻi evidence
Taxonomic identity, tree form, diagnostic morphology and island occurrence use the linked reviewed sources. Historical planting, cultivation, naturalization and invasive status are separate. Generated imagery is not occurrence evidence. The 1918–1959 Kauaʻi reforestation working register records 34 plants under Psidium guajava across 1 entries dated 1929. These are recorded planting quantities, not counts of surviving trees, and they do not by themselves establish current persistence, naturalization, or ecological impact. Source: Kauaʻi Reforestation Plantings 1918–1959 working register (user-supplied; reconciled 6 October 2026).
Names and classification
- Scientific name
- Psidium guajava
- Common names
- Common guava · guava
- Other names
- Psidium guajava · common guava · guava · Psidium cujavillus Burm.f. · Psidium pomiferum L.
- Record type
- Species
Kauaʻi occurrence and status
- Kauaʻi occurrence
- Recorded on Kauaʻi
- Origin
- Introduced
- Conservation status
- Not yet assessed
- Evidence date
- 2026-10-06
- Evidence limits
- Current Kauaʻi population size, distribution among forest types, trend, and ecosystem effects have not been established by a recent island-wide survey in the reviewed sources.
Habitat and ecology
- Habitats
- Not yet assessed
- Food and resource needs
- Not yet assessed
- Reproduction
- Flowers are bisexual and borne singly or in small axillary cymes on recent growth; insects contribute to pollination. The many-seeded berry matures from green toward yellow. Recruitment depends on viable hard seeds reaching suitable moist, open ground, with fruit consumption and animal movement providing dispersal opportunities.
- Shelter
- Not yet assessed
- Growth form
- Tree
Threats and conservation
- Monitoring
- Not yet assessed
- Data gaps
- Current population extent and trajectory · Additional species-specific ecological and conservation sources
Process and seasonal context
- Seasonal timing
- Not yet assessed
- Seasonal description
- Common guava (Psidium guajava) is an introduced tree treated as naturalized on Kauaʻi by Bishop Museum’s 2025 checklist and the 2026 Smithsonian checklist. Current extent is unassessed. An introduced, naturalized tropical fruit tree that persists outside cultivation and can recruit in disturbed vegetation, open secondary forest, forest edges, roadsides, pastures, and near former habitation. Its fleshy fruits are eaten by people and animals, enabling seed movement away from parent trees. The 2025 Bishop Museum checklist establishes naturalized presence on Kauaʻi; it does not by itself quantify forest abundance, trend, or ecological effect.