TROPICAL ALMOND TREE

Throughout the world's tropics when you see a street tree with big, blackjack-shaped leaves and the branches are arranged so that they appear to be in layers separated from one another by shadowy space -- as in the picture at the right -- a good bet is that it's the Tropical Almond, TERMINALIA CATAPPA, a member of the mostly tropical Combretum Family. Though common throughout tropical Mexico, including next to huts in Ek Balam, the species originally is from Madagascar, Malaya and the East Indies.

As the picture below shows, though the "almonds" look a lot like the almonds grown up North -- with a thin, leathery husk and a hard, woody "nut" inside containing an edible seed, which tastes more or less like the Northern almond, Tropical Almonds and Northern almonds are in entirely different plant families. Northern almonds are members of the Rose Family, and are very closely related to plums, cherries and peaches. Tropical Almonds are more closely related to Blackgum Trees and eucalyptuses.

Beneath the tree pictured above the ground was strewn with tropical almonds, but no one seemed interested in picking them up. One reason might be that the seed coat is pretty hard. You have to struggle a bit to get the "almond." However, the kernel is tasty and nutritious, worth knowing about when the infrastructure collapses.