Sterculiaceae Theobroma cacao L.

| |	© W.D. Hawthorne

Keywords in this picture :

• Bark
• Fruit
• Vegetative
• Flower & fruit
• Woody stem
• Plant parts
• Usage
• Bark, outer
• Species level terms

Places where this species can be found :

• Annandale Falls - GRENADA

Species information

Description
Leaves 4-8m, stalk swollen at one or both ends, blades 14-40 cm long; branches in whorls; flowers from larger branches and stems.

Interest
Theobroma - from theos, god and broma, food. Linnaeus consider the Mexican name cachoaquahuitl, with the same meaning, to be barbarous. Long cultivated in Central America. Food of the gods. Pound roasted cocoa beans eith maize and chillis. 100 beans would buy a slave. Columbus too beans to Europe and added roasted beans to sugar and vanilla. Popular in Itly and France in 17th century; Chocolate houses alongside cofeed shops, v. expensive. Defgatted cocoa invented in 18th C, Dutch company manufactured c. 1820. Milk chocolate was invented by M.D. Peter from Switzerland in 1876. Believed to originate slopes of the Andes, but has been cultivated possibkey for >2000 years in Mexico. Inmportant in the Windward islands, there being plantations in Jamaica in 1655. In 1727 most was destroyed wither by a hurricane or a disease. From Brazil, populations were taken to Fernando Po by the Portuguese, and from there a few to Ghana in 1879, although it may have been there earlier. In Grenada a chocolate drink from local cocoa balls is called "Cocoa Tea"

Specimen information

Collector
Hawthorne, W.D.

Specimen Number
s.n.