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Cashew is the common name of a tropical Evergreen Anacardium occidentale, in the family Anacardiaceae. It is native to South America and is the source of the cashew nut and the cashew apple, an accessory fruit. The tree can grow as tall as , but the dwarf cultivars, growing up to , prove more profitable, with earlier maturity and greater yields. The cashew nut is edible and is eaten on its own as a snack, used in recipes, or processed into cashew cheese or cashew butter. The nut is often simply called a 'cashew'. The cashew apple is a light reddish to yellow fruit, whose pulp and juice can be processed into a sweet, astringent fruit drink or fermented and distilled into liquor.
In 2023, 3.9 million of cashew nuts were harvested globally, led by the Ivory Coast and India. In addition to the nut and fruit, the shell yields derivatives used in lubricants, waterproofing, and paints.
The fruit of the cashew tree is an accessory fruit (sometimes called a pseudocarp or false fruit).Morton, Julia F. (1987). 9780961018412, Center for New Crops and Plant Products, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, W. Lafayette, Indiana. . ISBN 9780961018412 What appears to be the fruit is an oval or pear-shaped structure, a hypocarpium, that develops from the pedicel and the receptacle of the cashew flower. Called the cashew apple, better known in Central America as marañón, it ripens into a yellow or red structure about long.
The true fruit of the cashew tree is a kidney-shaped or boxing glove-shaped drupe that grows at the end of the cashew apple. The drupe first develops on the tree and then the pedicel expands to become the cashew apple. The drupe becomes the true fruit, a single Nutshell-encased seed, which is often considered a nut in the culinary sense. The seed is surrounded by a double-shell that contains an allergenic natural phenol resin, anacardic acid - which is a potent skin Irritation chemically related to the better-known and also toxin allergenic oil urushiol, which is found in the related poison ivy and lacquer tree.
The generic name Anacardium is composed of the Greek prefix ana- (), the Greek cardia (), and the Neo-Latin suffix . It possibly refers to the heart shape of the fruit, to "the top of the fruit stem" Merriam-Webster: "from the heartlike shape of the top of the fruit stem" or to the seed. The word anacardium was earlier used to refer to Semecarpus anacardium (the marking nut tree) before Carl Linnaeus transferred it to the cashew; both plants are in the same family. The epithet occidentale derives from the Western (or Occidental) world.
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