Cocoa and Chocolate Part 2

_Climate Necessary._

Cacao can only grow at tropical temperatures, and when shielded from the wind and unimpaired by drought. Enthusiasts, as a hobby, have grown the tree under gla.s.s in England; it requires a warmer temperature than either tea or coffee, and only after infinite care can one succeed in getting the tree to flower and bear fruit. The mean temperature in the countries in which it thrives is about 80 degrees F. in the shade, and the average of the maximum temperatures is seldom more than 90 degrees F., or the average of the minimum temperatures less than 70 degrees F.

The rainfall can be as low as 45 inches per annum, as in the Gold Coast, or as high as 150 inches, as in Java, provided the fall is uniformly distributed. The ideal spot is the secluded vale, and whilst in Venezuela there are plantations up to 2000 feet above sea level, cacao cannot generally be profitably cultivated above 1000 feet.

_Factors of Geographical Distribution._

Climate, soil, and manures determine the possible region of cultivation--the extent to which the area is utilised depends on the enterprise of man. The original home of cacao was the rich tropical region, far-famed in Elizabethan days, that lies between the Amazon and the Orinoco, and but for the enterprise of man it is doubtful if it would have ever spread from this region. Monkeys often carry the beans many miles--man, the master-monkey, has carried them round the world.

First the Indians spread cacao over the tropical belt of the American continent and cultivated it as far North as Mexico. Then came the Spanish explorers of the New World, who carried it from the mainland to the adjacent West Indian islands. Cacao was planted by them in Trinidad as early as 1525. Since that date it has been successfully introduced into many a tropical island. It was an important day in the history of Ceylon when Sir R. Horton, in 1834, had cacao plants brought to that island from Trinidad. The carefully packed plants survived the ordeal of a voyage of ten thousand miles. The most recent introduction is, however, the most striking. About 1880 a native of the Gold Coast obtained some beans, probably from Fernando Po. In 1891, the first bag of cacao was exported; it weighed 80 pounds. In 1915, 24 years later, the export from the Gold Coast was 120 million pounds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CACAO TREE, WITH PODS AND LEAVES]

_The Cacao Tree._

Tropical vegetation appears so bizarre to the visitor from temperate climes that in such surroundings the cacao tree seems almost commonplace. It is in appearance as moderate and unpretentious as an apple tree, though somewhat taller, being, when full grown, about twenty feet high. It begins to bear in its fourth or fifth year. Smooth in its early youth, as it gets older it becomes covered with little bosses (cushions) from which many flowers spring. I saw one fellow, very tall and gnarled, and with many pods on it; turning to the planter I enquired "How old is that tree?" He replied, almost reverentially: "It's a good deal older than I am; must be at least fifty years old." "It's one of the tallest cacao trees I've seen. I wonder--." The planter perceived my thought, and said: "I'll have it measured for you." It was forty feet high. That was a tall one; usually they are not more than half that height. The bark is reddish-grey, and may be partly hidden by brown, grey and green patches of lichen. The bark is both beautiful and quaint, but in the main the tree owes its beauty to its luxuriance of prosperous leaves, and its quaintness to its pods.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CACAO TREE, SHOWING PODS GROWING FROM TRUNK.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FLOWERS AND FRUITS ON MAIN BRANCHES OF A CACAO TREE.

(Reproduced from van Hall's _Cocoa_, by permission 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 a.s.sociate this with old leaves about to fall, with the cacao, as with some rose trees, it is the tint of the young leaves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CACAO PODS.]

_The Cacao Pod._

The fruit, which hangs on a short thick stalk, may be anything in shape from a melon to a stumpy, irregular cuc.u.mber, according to the botanic variety. The intermediate shape is like a lemon, with furrows from end to end. There are pods, called Calabacillo, smooth and ovate like a calabash, and there are others, more rare, so "n.o.bbly" that they are well-named "Alligator." The pods vary in length from five to eleven inches, "with here and there the great pod of all, the blood-red _sangre-tora_." The colours of the pods are as brilliant as they are various. They are rich and strong, and resemble those of the rind of the pomegranate. One pod shows many shades of dull crimson, another grades from gold to the yellow of leather, and yet another is all lack-l.u.s.tre pea-green. They may be likened to Chinese lanterns hanging in the woods.

One does not conclude from the appearance of the pod that the contents are edible, any more than one would surmise that tea-leaves could be used to produce a refreshing drink. I say as much to the planter, who smiles. With one deft cut with his machete or cutla.s.s, which hangs in a leather scabbard by his side, the planter severs the pod from the tree, and with another slash cuts the thick, almost woody rind and breaks open the pod. There is disclosed a ma.s.s of some thirty or forty beans, covered with juicy pulp. The inside of the rind and the ma.s.s of beans are gleaming white, like melting snow. Sometimes the ma.s.s is pale amethyst in colour. I perceive a pleasant odour resembling melon. Like little Jack Horner, I put in my thumb and pull out a snow-white bean. It is slippery to hold, so I put it in my mouth. The taste is sweet, something between grape and melon. Inside this fruity coating is the bean proper. From different pods we take beans and cut them in two, and find that the colour of the bean varies from purple almost to white.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CUT POD, REVEALING THE WHITE PULP ROUND THE BEANS (CEYLON.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CACAO PODS, SHEWING BEANS INSIDE.]

_Botanical Description._

Theobroma Cacao belongs to the family of the _Sterculiaceae_, and to the same order as the Limes and Mallows. It is described in Strasburger's admirable _Text-Book of Botany_ as follows:

"Family. _Sterculiaceae._

IMPORTANT GENERA. The most important plant is the Cocoa Tree (_Theobroma Cacao_). It is a low tree with short-stalked, firm, brittle, simple leaves of large size, oval shape, and dark green colour. The young leaves are of a bright red colour, and, as in many tropical trees, hang limply downwards. The flowers are borne on the main stem or the older branches, and arise from dormant axillary buds (Cauliflory). Each petal is bulged up at the base, narrows considerably above this, and ends in an expanded tip. The form of the reddish flowers is thus somewhat urn-shaped with five radiating points. The pentalocular ovary has numerous ovules in each loculus. As the fruit develops, the soft tissue of the septa extends between the single seeds; the ripe fruit is thus unilocular and many-seeded. The seed-coat is filled by the embryo, which has two large, folded, brittle cotyledons."

The last sentence conveys an erroneous impression. The two cotyledons, which form the seed, are not brittle when found in nature in the pod.

They are juicy and fleshy. And it is only after the seed has received special treatment (fermentation and drying) to obtain the bean of commerce, that it becomes brittle.

_Varieties of Theobroma Cacao._

As mentioned above, the pods and seeds of Theobroma Cacao trees show a marked variation, and in every country the botanist has studied these variations and cla.s.sified the trees according to the shape and colour of the pods and seeds. The existence of so many cla.s.sifications has led to a good deal of confusion, and we are indebted to Van Hall for the simplest way of clearing up these difficulties. He accepts the cla.s.sification first given by Morris, dividing the trees into two varieties--Criollo and Forastero:

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRAWINGS OF TYPICAL PODS, ill.u.s.trating varieties.

CRIOLLO FORASTERO FORASTERO (CALABACILLO VARIETY)]

_Extremes of Characteristics._

_Criollo._ _Forastero._

(Old Red, Caracas, etc.) Grading from Cundeamor (bottle-necked) to Calabacillo (smooth).

_Pod walls._ Thin and warty. Thick and woody.

_Beans._ Large and plump. Small and flat.

White. Heliotrope to purple.

Sweet. Astringent.

The cacao of the criollo variety has pods the walls of which are thin and warty, with ten distinct furrows. The seeds or beans are white as ivory throughout, round and plump, and sweet to taste. The forastero variety includes many sub-varieties, the kind most distinct from the criollo having pods, the walls of which are thick and woody, the surface smooth, the furrows indistinct, and the shape globular. The seeds in these pods are purple in colour, flat in appearance, and bitter to taste. This is a very convenient cla.s.sification. Personally I believe it would be possible to find pods varying by almost imperceptible gradations from the finest, purest, criollo to the lowest form of forastero (namely, calabacillo). The criollo yields the finest and rarest kind of cacao, but as sometimes happens with refined types in nature, it is a rather delicate tree, especially liable to canker and bark diseases, and this accounts for the predominance of the forastero in the cacao plantations of the world.

_The Cacao Plantation._

One can spend happy days on a cacao estate. "Are you going into the cocoa?" they ask, just as in England we might enquire, "Are you going into the corn?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: TROPICAL FOREST, TRINIDAD.

This has to be cleared before planting begins.]

Coconut plantations and sugar estates make a strong appeal to the imagination, but for peaceful beauty they cannot compare with the cacao plantation. True, coconut plantations are very lovely--the palms are so graceful, the leaves against the sky so like a fine etching--but "the slender coco's drooping crown of plumes" is altogether foreign to English eyes. Sugar estates are generally marred by the prosaic factory in the background. They are dead level plains, and the giant gra.s.s affords no shade from the relentless sun. Whereas the leaves of the cacao tree are large and numerous, so that even in the heat of the day, it is comparatively cool and pleasant under the cacao.

Cacao plantations present in different countries every variety of appearance--from that of a wild forest in which the greater portion of the trees are cacao, to the tidy and orderly plantation. In some of the Trinidad plantations the trees are planted in parallel lines twelve feet apart, with a tree every twelve feet along the line; and as you push your way through the plantation the apparently irregularly scattered trees are seen to flash momentarily into long lines. In other parts of the world, for example, in Grenada and Surinam, the ground may be kept so tidy and free from weeds that they have the appearance of gardens.