By far the Key West (Pantin) is the Island favorite, with a dark reddish-orange flesh, round in shape and is much sweeter than the Magana. It originates in Florida. It produces medium size fruit (15-40 oz, mid-late season. Flesh is pink to red, fiberless, excellent quality, contains 1 seed. The tree is tall. Ripening season - late summer through December.
A unique fruit with an interior texture that is both creamy and sweet, the vibrant salmon-colored flesh of the Pantin mamey sapote is unlike anything most people have ever tasted. The flavor is a combination of sweet potato and pumpkin with undertones of almond, chocolate, honey, and vanilla. The ovoid, medium-large fruit has a large center pit, similar to an avocado. This superior mamey sapote cultivar was discovered growing near a fire station in Key West, Florida. The seeds of this tree were believed to come from Cuba by way of 19th century dissidents who left the island at that time. The tree was originally called the Key West mamey sapote until it was selected and propagated by Eugenio Pantin in the early 1950s. The story goes that a Cuban emigrant named Josefina Jimenez smuggled three mamey seeds into the US in her brassiere and gave them to Pantin, who grew them as seedling rootstocks, onto which he grafted budwood of the Key West mamey tree. Pantin then proceeded to plant a small commercial orchard in Miami-Dade County, Florida. After his death in 1963, Eugenio's son, Donald, took over the family business, and nurseryman, Lawrence Zill, who had recognized the potential of Eugenio's prized cultivar, named it the Pantin mamey sapote.
Today, Pantin represents about 95 percent of the mamey sapotes produced on some 350 acres under cultivation in southern Florida.
