Cashew Fruit - Two In One

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Milk-colored nuts, which today have ceased to be exotic on Russian trade counters, called by the beautiful and incomprehensible word "cashew", are only part of the fruit of the tree of the same name. Of course, the plant has an official Latin name, which is much longer than the more common name "Cashew", and it sounds even more mysterious than the short one. The second part of the fruit of this plant is a juicy "apple", which in its natural form is not suitable for export travel, and therefore not all lovers of cashew nuts know about it

Despite the fact that the cost of such a product as nuts is sometimes very “biting”, Russians still allow themselves to purchase this healthy and tasty food product from time to time. I like many of the nut varieties. The top five most favorite includes a nut with the name "cashew".

Honestly, I never thought about where and how this delicious miracle of nature grows until I encountered a spreading tree in Thailand. From a rather low trunk of a tree, powerful branches scattered in different directions, almost as thick as the trunk itself. This can be seen in the photograph below, which captures a part of the trunk and a bifurcated powerful branch extending to the right of the trunk. About the same branch extends from the trunk to the left, providing balance to the tree. Growing higher, the branches-trunks continue to branch, forming a lush crown of a spectacular tree.

It is possible that I have already passed by the Cashew trees dozens or hundreds of times, the Latin name for which sounds like "Anacardium occidental" ("Western anacardium"). But, their tough, leathery elliptical leaves, at a glance very similar to the leaves of numerous other tropical plants (about how Asians seem to Europeans to be "the same face", and vice versa), did not allow me to uniquely identify the plants. And only the appearance of brooms on the branches, consisting of small flowers interspersed with miniature fruits, the shape of which no longer gave room for error, I was delighted to realize that in front of me was a tree with my favorite nuts.

I did not consider small flowers, especially since paniculate inflorescences with partially pollinated insects of female flowers, hanging with numerous green "boxing miniature gloves", were located quite high above my head. Already in the photographs I took, I calculated that the flowers have five petals, as stated in the information I read about Cashews. Here they are - little beauties:

But, I managed to take a couple of "handsome men" with me for further "research". One remained intact, showing in the photo its green bell-shaped pedicel and a green nut-embryo, the edge of which had already been attacked by some tropical pests. The second had to be gutted in order to look inside. The green shell turned out to be quite thick, and under it was a miniature white embryo - the future edible cashew nut.

After two to three weeks, the size of the peduncle outgrew the size of the nut. Now the second name given by botanists to this part of the plant - "receptacle", has become more suitable for her. Indeed, the nut seemed to be lying on this fleshy and juicy fruit, however, upside down. This is a completely edible fruit, only very tender, and therefore suitable for eating where it grows, unlike a nut, which is separated, two protective shells are removed from it and sent to other countries.

The cashew receptacle I met is colored yellow. But it can also be red, resembling outwardly local red apples with watery pulp, which have many different names: Malabar plum, chompu, rose apple …

It was the close collaboration of two very different parts of the plant: a fleshy receptacle and a hard nut-fruit that gave botanists a reason for the official name of the genus of plants - "Anacardium". I found several different interpretations of this word on the Internet. I liked one of them more than others, so I base my version on it.

The word "anacardium" is based on two Greek words. The first word - "ava" (sounds like "ana") means "outside". The second word is "cardia", which means "heart". By "heart" is meant a nut located outside, that is, outside the "fruit". It turns out that at the time of assigning the name to the plant, the botanist considered a fleshy peduncle as a fruit. But, this part of the plant, although edible, is not a fruit. This is just a pedicel that has grown over time. And the fruit is my favorite cashew nut, hiding under a double protective shell.