Fruit of the Anacardia Tree

Friend Marian’s Report

Hello to you from north Cameroun.

I am still in the United States, finishing up the last permissions after a long, very long problem with malaria (beginning in October 2022 and continuing even into March 2023 when I fell unconscious while at my home in Milwaukie and the hospital got to see first hand what had scared the care givers in Cameroun).

I so want to return to northern Cameroun for the planting season. Return with seeds to plant and tools for better farming. I’ve been investigating a hand held chain saw (Stihl) and a chipper to help with weedy bits and branches. We have recently purchased an Anacardia plantation 4 acre piece – so now we are producing Anacardia from the mature trees. Anacardia is the Latin / French name for the Cashew nut tree. But Camerounians don’t much eat the nuts, they go for the juicy fruit as it ripens. If the fruit is eaten then the nut never ripens. If a person waits for the nut to ripen then the fruit is rotten. We got a washtub of fruits with a potential sale down the road but the 22 resident street boys and orphans managed to eat it all overnight. :)

Pulling on your team, (the meaning of the Greek Koinonia)

Marian Hungerford

ANACARDIUM – A tropical American genus of shrubs and trees of the sumac family, of garden interest only because it contains the cashew. It is an evergreen tree with simple rather leathery leaves and many small flowers in terminal clusters. Fruit fleshy, red or yellow, technically part of the receptacle and commonly called cashew-apple in the tropics. It is about 2.5 inches long. The kidney shaped nut (the true fruit) contains the edible kernel which, when roasted, is the cashew nut of commerce.

Can be cultivated outdoors only in zone 9, but easily grown there as it appears to need no special soil conditions. It’s propagated by seed or by budding. An irritating or poisonous oil in the shell of the nut makes harvesting the nuts a dreadful task. Even the smoke from the burning shells is irritating.

The Garden Dictionary, Norman Taylor, 1936