Well, this is one I won't be trying to grow at home. I would love to try to grow a coffee tree, just for the flower / scent alone. Tea is a definite possibility for growing at home, although in my part of the world it might require some special care and protection from the heat. But the chocolate tree, or rather, Theobroma Cacao, is one of the oddest and most persnickety plants around.
It apparently has a very narrow list of requirements about soil, temperature and moisture:
Cacao is a finicky plant. It has exacting moisture, temperature, and soil requirements, and falls victim to many insect pests and fungal diseases. For this reason, the plant was an unlikely candidate to coax out of the rain forest and into a plantation setting. It grows best in places where rain falls year round and the air is warm and humid. Accustomed to the shelter of the rainforest, cacao trees do not tolerate wind and need well-drained but moist, deep soils.
Quote and illustration from California Wild, drawing by Alan Chou
That rules out my back yard. Theobroma Cacao ("food of gods", theo=god, bromine/brosis=food) does best in certain areas of the world, and probably should have been left to grow wild. But we've taken it from it's natural state and made it into a domesticated plantation creature, and according to some of the experts, that may have contributed to the problems the cacao trees are having now.
According to Allen Young's studies, crowded plantation life is part of the problem, and breeding is another.
"Young found that selective breeding of domesticated cacao trees inadvertently altered the flower's smell, making it less desirable to nearby midges."
The upshot is that the insects that would normally help in pollination ... aren't doing their job. That means that though hundreds of flowers bloom on each tree each year, only a handful become the seed pods that we turn into chocolate.
I sure hope we resolve this problem. I can't imagine a world without chocolate.
It's an odd looking thing, the cacao tree. The flowers are pretty, very intricately shaped, white and pinkish, about the size of a golf ball, but they bloom right off the trunk, what's called cauliflory in the world of botanists which I've been traveling the last few days.
As they grow, assuming they've been pollinated, they turn into these giant pods that remind me of something from an old horror film (Invasion of the Body Snatchers?).
It's a wonder that we ever figured out how to make chocolate from this odd looking thing. But then, we're ingenious, we human beings, and especially when it comes to getting our pleasures from the things we ingest.
Flowers We Love, Part I: The Coffee Tree
Flowers We Love, Part II: The Tea Tree
When I was living in Ghana and saw my first cacao pods, I had no idea what they were. Agreeing with you, I suspected one was harboring my likeness. The thought they were cacao never crossed my mind. I always thought chocolate just came wrapped and with nuts if that's your preference.
Posted by: Kat | August 30, 2005 at 12:33 PM