User blog comment:DancePowderer/Metaphysical Horticulture/@comment-4493594-20120802065814

In other words, the maximum re-spawning time of a fruit depends on the growth cycle of the corresponding fruit, i.e. if the DF was a Coco de Mer it might take over 50 years. And if Luffy died in fall or winter it'd take about half a year for the Gomu Gomu no Mi to respawn since melons (which I assume the fruit is) grow in summer. Most of them anyway.

The process of transferring the DF ability also explains why no fruit can exist twice AND why it doesn't matter whether you eat one bite of the fruit or the whole thing. You might say that the fruit gets possessed by the devil spirit and the spirit can only possess one host at a time. I suppose that if one part of the fruit gets eaten, the rest of the spirit just gets sucked in with it.

I wonder what happens if you cut the fruit into two pieces of the same size and let two different people eat it at the same time. Does the spirit remain in one half of the fruit, making the other useless, or is it split over the two halves and chooses the host who manages to eat it quicker?