Cashew Tree from Taman Botani Putrajaya

During a trip to Putrajaya in December of 2012, one of the landmarks visited was Taman Botani Putrajaya, which has a large nursery where many different plants are cultivated.

I was given the choice of a plant to take home, even though I was reluctant to because I didn’t fancy lugging a plant home via public transport, in addition to my heavy luggage.

Since I couldn’t decide what to get, I was offered a “gajus” tree, which I had no idea what it was, until I did a search on the internet. I have to admit that it never crossed my mind that cashew nuts grew on trees. Well, I never gave that a thought before!

Therefore, you can imagine how glad I am that I took the trouble to get the tree home, and it successfully bore fruit after some 22 months of daily care and watering. The first round brought us two cashew apples and nuts, but I believe that it will be more productive in the next season.

According to Wikipedia, “the pulp from the cashew apple can be processed into a sweet, astringent fruit drink or distilled into liqueur. Meanwhile, the shell of the cashew nut yields derivatives that can be used in many applications from lubricants to paints, and other parts of the tree have traditionally been used for snake-bites and other folk remedies.”

For further information on the cashew tree, cashew nuts and also cashew apples, read this page on Wikipedia.

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