Overview

Cashew is the common name for a tropical and subtropical evergreen tree, Anacardium occidentale (syn. Anacardium curatellifolium), in the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae (sumac family). It also is the name for the commercially important kidney-shaped, nut-like seed of this plant, which is edible when roasted or cooked.While the seed of the cashew plant serves the purpose of reproduction for the plant, it provides various nutritional values for other animals, including humans. However, it has taken human creativity to develop means to prepare this seed for consumption, since it naturally is surrounded by a caustic substance that can blister the skin of people. This creativity likewise is reflected in the use of other many parts of the plant, including the cashew apple, the wood, and even the caustic resin itself.Anacardiaceae occidentale is native to tropical Central and South America, notably northeastern Brazil, where it is called by its Portuguese name Caju (the fruit) or Cajueiro (the tree). It is now widely grown in tropical climates, including parts of Africa and Asia, for its cashew nuts and cashew apples (see below).The cashew is a small evergreen tree (or shrub) growing to ten-12 meters tall, with a short, often irregularly-shaped trunk. The leaves are spirally arranged, leathery textured, elliptic to obovate, four to 22 centimeters long, and two to 15 centimeters broad, with a smooth margin. The flowers are produced in a panicle or corymb up to 26 centimeters long. Each flower is small, pale green at first, then turning reddish, with five slender, acute petals seven to 15 millimeters long.What appears to be the fruit of the cashew tree is an oval or pear-shaped accessory fruit or false fruit that develops from the receptacle of the cashew flower. Called the cashew apple (better known in Central America as maranon ), it ripens into a yellow and/or red structure about five-11 centimeters long. In botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary-together with seeds-of a flowering plant. The term false fruit (pseudocarp, accessory fruit) is sometimes applied to a plant structure that resembles a fruit, but is not derived from a flower or flowers.The true fruit of the cashew tree is a kidney or boxing-glove shaped drupe that grows at the end of the pseudofruit. Actually, the drupe develops first on the tree, and then the peduncle expands into the pseudofruit. Within the true fruit is a single seed, the cashew nut. Although called a nut in the culinary sense, in the botanical sense, the fruit of the cashew is a seed. The true fruit, however, is classified as a nut by some botanists.The seed is surrounded by a double shell containing a caustic phenolic resin, urushiol, a potent skin irritant toxin also found in the related poison ivy in the sumac family. Some people are allergic to cashews, but cashews are a less frequent allergen than some other nuts.

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