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Anacardium excelsum
A large evergreen tree of Central and South American dry and riverside forests, reaching up to 48 m. Like other cashews it contains irritant resin, so handle the fruit and sap with care.
Anacardium excelsum, the wild cashew, espavél or espavé, is a tree in the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae. The tree is common in the tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests of Pacific and Atlantic watersheds of Central and South America, extending as far north as Guatemala and south into Ecuador.
Fruit-eating bats pick the fruit of the wild cashew and transport it to their feeding places, where they eat only the fleshy part. The nuts are dropped into the leaf litter of the forest floor, where they later germinate.
When uncooked, the fruit (both the nut and the surrounding fleshy part) is highly toxic to humans. It may, however, be eaten after it is roasted.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Anacardium excelsum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
