Plant of the day - Cacao Tree - Theobroma cacao

Before going through the Fern Room and into the North Garden, I stopped to look through the John and Ruth Huss Orchid Viewing Area located just outside of the Fern Room entrance.

The horticulture staff places currently blooming orchids in this corner of the orchid growing greenhouse for the public to see.  Among today's orchids, there was a beautiful Cischweinfia sheehaniae orchid.  Unfortunately, my camera did not adequately capture the beauty of these tiny but beautiful flowers.

Today, although not excessively hot, the air was quite humid in the North Garden (NG). I was greeted at the entrance of the NG with a beautiful flower high up on the Ethiopian Banana plant.  This is just one of many spectacular sights missed by many visitors that don't look up when they walk around the conservatory.

Fruits can still be seen on multiple plants including the jackfruit, the calamondin orange tree and the Barbados cherry tree. I'm pleasantly surprised to find several cacao pods on the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao).  The word cacao is derived from the Nahuatl (Aztec language) word cacahuatl.






Some interesting facts about cacao:

Cacao beans were used both for making drinks and as a major currency in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures.  The buying power of quality cacao beans was quite strong. In some areas like the Yucatan, cacao beans are thought to have been used as currency as late as the 1840s.

From www.worldcocoafoundation.org:

• Number of cocoa farmers, worldwide: 5-6 million
• Number of people who depend upon cocoa for their livelihood, worldwide: 40-50 million
• Annual cocoa production, worldwide: 3 million tons
• Annual increase in demand for cocoa: 3 percent per year, for the past 100 years
• Current global market value of annual cocoa crop: $5.1 billion
• Cocoa growing regions: Africa, Asia, Central America, South America (all within 20 degrees of the equator)
• Percentage of cocoa that comes from West Africa: 70 percent
• Length of time required for a cocoa tree to produce its first beans (pods): five years

For more information:

http://dfenick-cacaotree.yolasite.com/scientific-description.php
http://www.xocoatl.org/tree.htm
http://mgonline.com/articles/chocolate.aspx
http://chocolatetreebooks.com/choccycare.html
http://www.cacaoweb.net/cocoa-chocolate.html

Plant of the day - Black Pepper - Piper nigrum

What a beautiful Columbus Day today!  The outside temperature is approximately 68 degrees (F).  A few of the windows in the North Garden are cracked open. The ceiling fans are on high.  The temperature and humidity feel lower than normal.

Not too many visitors this morning.  The number of visitors in the fall is noticeably lower than is experienced over the summer.  Today, I spoke at length with a nice gentleman about the harvesting of peppercorns (Piper nigrum).  He was surprised to learn that red, white and black peppercorns all start as berries from the flowers on the same plant.

Peppercorn color varies depending on harvest date.  In general, unripe green berries are picked then pickled (halting the fermentation process). Green peppercorns have the mildest taste of the peppercorns because they are picked the earliest.  Black peppercorns are picked early like green peppercorns, but are then fermented which turns them black.  White peppercorns are picked when the berries are ripe, but are then soaked and hulled giving the white peppercorns a milder taste than their black counterparts.s

Unfortunately, there are no peppercorns for visitors to see on these peppercorn plants due to the lack of pollinators in the North Garden.  However, the plant itself is very invasive and visitors can see that it is heartily growing all around the ground areas.

While walking around today, I also noticed some unusual behavior in the koi. Several of the koi kept leaping up on to the base of an aquatic plant located in their pool. Several of us watching thought that this behavior might be an indication that these fish have not been fed today. I alerted a staff member with the hope that they would be fed. Interestingly, she reported that the koi had been fed early that morning.

The cherry tree in the back corner still has the cherry growing up on a branch.  I will be interested to see if there are more on my next shift.