The Cocoa Bean

Chocolate comes from the fruit of the cocoa tree, and starts as a pod, containing lots of small fleshy white fruit in rows. The cocoa bean is essentially the seed germ of the fruit and looks rather like a lychee seed: small, brown, shiny and about the size and shape of an almond. The tree has the unusual habit of bearing its flowers and subsequently its pods directly on the main trunk as well as on the branches. The cocoa tree is also remarkable in that, at almost any time of the year, a close look will reveal thousands of small waxy white flowers. These blossoms are extravagant and up to fifty or even a hundred thousand can be produced by a mature tree in a single year.