Actinidia deliciosa Zealand, around 1924. This is the most widely grown cultivar in the world. Chinese gooseberry was initially grown in domestic gardens, but commercial planting began in the 1940s. In 1959, Turners and Growers named it kiwifruit, after New Zealand's national bird, the kiwi—brown and furry. , Italy was the leading producer of kiwifruit in the world, followed by New Zealand, Chile, France, Greece, Japan, and the United States. Kiwifruit is still produced in China, but China has never made it to the top 10 list of kiwifruit-producing countries. In China, it is grown mainly in the mountainous area upstream of
Actinidiaceae Actinidiaceae The Actinidiaceae are a small family of flowering plants commonly known as the Chinese gooseberry family. The family has three genera and about 360 species and is a member of the order Ericales. They are temperate and subtropical woody vines, shrubs, and trees, native to Asia ("Actinidia" or kiwifruit, "Clematoclethra", and "Saurauia") and Central America and South America ("Saurauia" only). "Saurauia", with its 300 species, is the largest genus in this family. Although now confined to Asia and tropical Central and South America, evidence indicates in the past the family had a wider distribution. The now extinct genus "Parasaurauia"