Plant Story: Chocolate, Food of the Gods

Theobroma cacao tree, cacao 

    No doubt you know the story of chocolate.  My two favorite parts of the story are that it started out being drunk spiced with chilis, and that the name had to be changed.

  Chocolate is made from the roasted seeds of a small tree, Theobroma cacao, in the plant family Sterculiaceae.  It is native to the New World tropics, requiring warm temperatures (never below 60 F/ 16 C!) and plenty of rain. Big pods form on the branches of the tree. Unlike familiar temperate zone fruit trees, the flowers and then the fruit (pods) of cacao come directly from the branches, not off little stems. That is probably important, considering that cacao pods are as big as grapefruits.  

Related Plants: Camellia and Tea

Camellia variety, Pink Perfection

    There have been times when plant relationships surprised me. The fact that tea is a camellia, or one kind of camellia gives us tea, whichever way you want to look at it, is one of them.

   My father, when he retired to Florida, became a camellia grower, officer in the local Camellia Society and judge at camellia flower shows. Consequently I learned a lot about camellias and certainly admired the flowers.    

    Camellia is a genus of shrubs, classified in the plant family Theaceae, native to east and southeast Asia, especially China and Japan. They have attractive flowers, and have been bred and hybridized to create great floral diversity. See some of the diversity on http://www.americancamellias.org/default.aspx 

     Camellias have been in cultivation in China and Japan for centuries.  Most of the varieties cultivated for their flowers are Camellia japonica,  although Camellia reticulata (from China) and C. sassanqua (from Japan) have contributed important varieties.