If you are anything like me you might have thought that carob was a more raw form of cocoa or something like that. Well guess what ... we were wrong!!!
Carob actually comes from a completely different part of the world and is from a completely different family of plants !!! In fact Carob is a form of legume and Cocoa although called a bean by us is not actually a bean or a legume.
Carob or ( Ceratonia siliqua ) is native to the Eastern Mediterranean even the Middle East and has been cultivated for the at least the past 4000 years !!! Pretty impressive huh!!!
Carob is also known as the "locust bean" this is due to a misunderstanding as it was once believed that these were the locusts that John the Baptist ate in the wilderness. It turns out this isn't the case as John apparently ate actual migratory locusts. You know the giant grasshopper things !!!
Seeds were used to weight gold, hence the word "carat." Mohammed's army ate kharoub , and Arabs planted the crop in northern Africa and Spain (Moors), along with citrus and olives.
Spaniards then carried carob to Mexico and South America, and the British took carob to South Africa, India, and Australia.
Carob can be grown anywhere Citrus grows well. So if you have a lemon tree why not try growing a Carob tree too. Nothing like having a form of choccy available to you to pick straight off the tree.
So there you go that is all about Carob. There is of course loads more to learn about it and all you have to do is ask Google.
This is a Carob Tree
These are its pods
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