The production and processing of cashew nuts are complex and difficult problems. It has been more or less casually planted in all warm regions and a few fruiting specimens are found in experimental stations and private gardens in southern Florida. It flourished and ran wild and formed extensive forests in these locations and on nearby islands, and eventually it also became dispersed in East Africa and throughout the tropical lowlands of northern South America, Central America and the West Indies. The cashew is native to and northeast Brazil and, in the 16th Century, Portuguese traders introduced it to Mozambique and coastal India, but only as a soil retainer to stop erosion on the coasts. Thus is formed the conspicuous, so-called cashew apple.
An interesting feature of the cashew is that the nut develops first and when it is full-grown but not yet ripe, its peduncle or, more technically, receptacle, fills out, becomes plump, fleshy, pear-shaped or rhomboid-to-ovate, 2 to 4 1/2 in (5-11.25 cm) in length, with waxy, yellow, red, or red-and-yellow skin and spongy, fibrous, very juicy, astringent, acid to subacid, yellow pulp. The true fruit of the tree is the cashew nut resembling a miniature boxing-glove consisting of a double shell containing a caustic phenolic resin in honeycomb-like cells, enclosing the edible kidney-shaped kernel. Yellowish-pink, 5-petalled flowers are borne in 6 to 10-in (15-25 cm) terminal panicles of mixed male, female and bisexual. Its leaves, mainly in terminal clusters, are oblong-oval or obovate, 4 to 8 in (10-20 cm) long and 2 to 4 in (5-10 cm) wide, and leathery. It is generally bushy, low-branched and spreading may reach 35 ft (10.6 m) in height and width. The cashew tree, Anacardium occidentale L., is called marañon in most Spanish-speaking countries, but merey in Venezuela and caju or cajueiro in Portuguese. This pseudofruit (or "false fruit") is a by-product of the cashew nut industry. A similar confection is made and sold in the Dominican Republic. 67: Food technologists in Mysore, India, developed a candied cashew apple product, more appealing than the canned. 66: The so-called "cashew apple", a pseudofruitactually the swollen stalk of the true fruit of Anacardium occidentale, the cashew nutis fibrous but juicy and locally popular preserved in sirup.įig. Plate XXX: CASHEW APPLE, Anacardium occidentaleįig. Cashew Apple Index | Search | Home | Morton