332 BOTANY AND PHARMACOGNOSY. 



Sour Cucumber tree or Cream-of-tartar tree (Adansonia Greg- 

 orii) of Northern Australia ; and the Monkey-bread tree or 

 Baobab {Adansonia digitata) of India and South America, which 

 attains a diameter of 9 ]\I. The green fruit of Matisia cordata 

 of the Andes region is edible. The seeds of Bomhax insigne 

 and Matisia Castonon of South America yield a product on 

 roasting which is used like cacao bean. The seeds of Cava- 

 nillesia umhellata of Peru are edible and contain a considerable 

 quantity of fixed oil. 



e. STERCULIACE.^ OR COLA FAMILY. The plants are 

 herbs, shrubs or trees, sometimes lianes, with mostly simple, petio- 

 late, alternate leaves; the flowers are small and form a rather 

 complex inflorescence. 



Tlicobronia Cacao is a small tree 5 to 10 M. high, with cori- 

 aceous, glaucous, entire leaves, and clusters of brownish 5-mer- 

 ous flowers arising from the older branches or stem ; the 

 fruit is large, fleshy, ovoid, lo-furrowed longitudinally, yellow 

 or reddish, and contains five rows of seeds, 10 or 12 in each row 

 (Fig. 167). The seeds are ovoid, somewhat flattened, and with 

 large, convoluted cotyledons which break up into more or less 

 angular fragments on drying. The seeds contain 35 to 50 per cent, 

 of a fixed oil known as Caco butter and ofificial as Oleum Theo- 

 bromatis ; 15 per cent, of starch; 15 per cent, of proteins; i to 4 

 per cent, of theobromine ; 0.07 to 0.36 per cent, of cafifeine, about 

 0.5 per cent, of sugar, and also a small amount of tannin. The 

 red color of the seed is due to a principle known as cacao-red 

 which is formed by the action of a ferment on a glucoside. 



The Cacao tree is indigenous to the countries bordering the 

 Gulf of Mexico and is now cultivated in many tropical countries. 

 Most of the cacao of the market is obtained from Ecuador (the 

 Guayaquil variety being especially valued), Curasao, Mexico, 

 Trinidad, and the Philippine Islands. The seeds of the wild 

 plants contain a bitter principle, the quantity of which is found 

 to be greatly reduced in the plants when under cultivation. 

 The bitter principles in the raw product are more or less destroyed 

 by the process of fermentation to which the seeds are sub- 

 jected in preparing them for use, which at the same time develops 

 the aroma. 



