Common Names: Cocoa, Cacao, Chocolate Tree
Scientific Name: Theobroma cacao
Family: Malvaceae
Native Range: Tropical Central and South America

Most people know cacao because it gives us chocolate, but the tree itself is just as interesting as the product made from it.

Cacao is a small tropical evergreen tree that prefers warm, humid conditions and some protection from intense sun. In nature it often grows beneath the canopy of taller rainforest trees.

One of the most unusual things about cacao is where it produces its flowers.

Instead of flowering only at the tips of young branches, cacao produces flowers directly from its trunk and older branches. This is called cauliflory.

If you look closely at the trunk, you may see small knobby areas called flower cushions. These can produce flowers repeatedly for many years.

The flowers themselves are tiny and intricate, usually pale cream, pinkish or reddish. A cacao tree may produce thousands of flowers, but only a small percentage will ever become mature pods.

The principal pollinators are not bees.

Cacao is mainly pollinated by tiny midges—very small flies that are able to work their way into the complicated flower structure.

After successful pollination, a tiny fruit begins to develop directly from the trunk. Young cacao fruits are often called cherelles.

Many of these young fruits naturally stop growing and shrivel. This is called cherelle wilt, and it is one of the ways the tree regulates how much fruit it can support.

The fruits that continue growing develop into the large, ribbed pods we associate with cacao.

Depending on the variety, immature pods may be green, red or purple. As they ripen, their colour changes—often toward yellow, orange or reddish tones.

Inside each mature pod are rows of seeds surrounded by a sweet, white pulp.

Those seeds are what eventually become cocoa beans.

But chocolate does not come directly from the pod.

After the seeds are removed, they are fermented, dried, roasted and processed. Fermentation is especially important because many of the characteristic flavours we associate with chocolate begin developing during that stage.

The scientific name Theobroma cacao is especially appropriate.

Theobroma comes from Greek words meaning “food of the gods.”

The cacao tree was culturally and economically important in ancient Mesoamerica long before Europeans encountered it. Cacao beans were used for beverages, ceremonies and, in some societies, even as a form of currency.

Another interesting feature is that cacao may carry several stages of reproduction at the same time.

On a single tree you might find:

• flower buds
• open flowers
• tiny cherelles
• developing pods
• mature pods

So unlike trees with one dramatic flowering season followed by one fruiting season, cacao can show much of its life cycle simultaneously.

That makes it a particularly interesting tree for phenology.

When you look at cacao, you are looking not only at the source of chocolate, but at a tree with one of the more unusual reproductive strategies in the tropical plant world.

And perhaps the best thing to remember is this:

Chocolate begins not with a candy bar, but with a tiny flower growing directly out of the trunk of a tropical tree.