Ethnobotany and Plant Conservation - Marjorie McNeely Conservatory, Como Park, St. Paul, Minnesota: Plant of the day - Cacao Tree

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