Wikimedia Commons
Malvaceae
Cocoa Flower
Theobroma cacao
Divine food, sacred currency, ancient luxury.
- Family
- Malvaceae
- Genus
- Theobroma
- Native to
- Tropical Americas
- Bloom season
- Year-Round
- Type
- Tree
- Height
- 4–8 m (13–26 ft)
- Sunlight
- Part shade to full shade
- Soil
- Rich, moist, well-drained
- Water
- High
- Hardiness
- 11–12
- Lifespan
- Long-lived (40–100 years)
Did you know
- Cocoa flowers grow directly from the trunk and main branches of the tree (a phenomenon called 'cauliflory')—they look like tiny waxy stars stuck onto the bark.
- Only one in every 400–500 cocoa flowers ever produces a pod—the rest fall to the ground unfertilized, making chocolate one of the most pollinator-limited crops on Earth.
- The flowers can only be pollinated by tiny midges called forcipomyia, which crawl into the complex bloom structure—no bee, butterfly, or hummingbird is small enough to do the job.
- The genus name 'Theobroma' literally means 'food of the gods' in Greek—a name given by Linnaeus in 1753 in tribute to the Aztec belief that cacao was a gift from Quetzalcoatl.
- Aztec emperor Moctezuma reportedly drank 50 cups of frothed chocolate (cacao mixed with chili and vanilla) per day from a golden goblet—and his treasury contained 960 million cacao beans used as currency.
Color meanings
0
divine food
1
sacred luxury
2
ancient gift