FLOWERS AND FRUITS ON MAIN BRANCHES OF CACAO TREE
(Reproduced from van Hall's Cocoa, by permisson of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.).
The Flowers, Leaves and Fruit.
Although cacao trees are not unlike the fruit trees of England, there are differences which, when first one sees them, cause expressions of surprise and pleasure to leap to the lips. One sees what one never saw before, the fruit springing from the main trunk, quite close to the ground. An old writer has explained that this is due to a wise providence, because the pod is so heavy that if it hung from the end of the branches it would fall off before it reached maturity. The old writer talks of providence; a modern writer would see in the same facts a simple example of evolution. On the same cacao tree every day of the year may be found flowers, young podkins and mature pods side by side. I say "found" advisedly—at the first glance one does not see the flowers because they are so dainty and so small. The buds are the size of rice grains, and the flowers are not more than half an inch across when the petals are fully out. The flowers are pink or yellow, of wax-like appearance, and have no odour. They were commonly stated to be pollinated by thrips and other insects. Dr. von Faber of Java has recently shown that whilst self-pollination is the rule, cross fertilisation occurs between the flowers on adjacent or interlocking trees. These graceful flowers are so small that one can walk through a plantation without observing them, although an average tree will produce six thousand blossoms in a year. Not more than one per cent. of these will become fruit. Usually it takes six months for the bud to develop into the mature fruit. The lovely mosses that grow on the stems and branches are sometimes so thick that they have to be destroyed, or the fragile cacao flower could not push its way through. Whilst the flowers are small, the leaves are large, being as an average about a foot in length and four inches in breadth. The cacao tree never appears naked, save on the rare occasions when it is stripped by the wind, and the leaves are green all the year round, save when they are red, if the reader will pardon an Hibernianism. And indeed there is something contrary in the crimson tint, for whilst we usually associate this with old leaves about to fall, with the cacao, as with some rose trees, it is the tint of the young leaves.
CACAO PODS.