Lori Squires, age 13, of Campbell River, B.C., Canada, for her question:
DO CASHEWS REALLY GROW LIKE PEANUTS?
Nobody seems to know how this rumor arose but let's not believe a word of it. The peanut is really a bean with peculiar growing habits and not a true nut at all. The cashew is a genuine nut. Though it, too, has some peculiar growing habits, it is produced by a genuine nut tree.
The peanut is a pretty green bean type bush. When the pea type flowers fade they produce dangling stems that poke down into the ground. There they form delicious peanuts, encased in pale crispy shells. Though we call them peanuts, maybe we should call them ground peas.
The cashew is another story altogether. It grown on a great tropical tree, maybe 40 feet tall. The leathery green leaves are six inches long and four inches wide. This handsome cashew tree is a native of Central America and very much at home in faraway India. It also grows in the mild climate of Florida.
The blossoms are clusters of small yellowish pink flowers. When the petals fall, fruits that look like baby apples begin to form. As they develop, a small nodule, somewhat like a bent thumb, appears on the end opposite the fruit stalk.
In time, the fruit becomes cashew apples and the partly embedded nodules become the cashew nuts. Actually, the edible nutmeat is encased in a double shell which, for a very good reason, never gets to market. This great tropical tree just happens to be related to one of our most unfriendly plant neighbors poison ivy.
The cashew tree produces a liquid somewhat similar to the irritating stuff in poison ivy. It is a brownish liquid, tucked between the two shells of the encased cashew meat. Before those delicious nuts go to market they must be shelled and roasted, a process that completely destroys the poison ivy¬type material.
Apparently the cashew apple is quite uncontaminated. Some people enjoy eating these fleshy red or yellow fruits right off the tree. Others make them into delicious jams and jellies.
The tasty cashew nut is tender, nutritious and rich in oil. The oil may be squeezed out to make delicate cooking and salad oil. Oil from the nut shells may be made into insect repellants and gummy sap from the wood may be used to make inks and varnishes. Unlike the peanut, which finishes its work in a summer season, the useful cashew tree lives on and on for years and years.