Does Chocolate Grow on A Tree?

Does chocolate grow on a tree?

Yes, it does. The fruit doesn't look like a bar of chocolate that you'd usually find on a supermarket shelf though. It looks green like the ones in this photo when it's young and yellow and reddish brown when it's ripe.

The chocolate fruit (called cocoa or cacao) is not eaten for its flesh. It is the seeds that are extracted from the fruit. These seeds are then dried and fermented to make the basic ingredient of the chocolate that we know.

I saw these cacao fruits on a tree near my office in the north of Bandung.