- carob tree drawing
- Life expectancy from seed to death can be around the 200 year mark. Often longer.
- The Carob Tree often doesn’t fruit till it is around 8 years old. The fruit is a dark brown flatten pod. 13-30cm long and about 2.5cm wide which contains a sweet chocolate like pulp and several seeds. Seeds are ground down into a powder.
- Carob pods are ready for harvest in Autumn.
- The carob tree will continue to fruit for as long as 200 years. Bearing heavy crops of carob pods from about 20 years old.
- Country of origin is the Middle East/Mediterranean.
- In the Middle East the Carob tree gets around 30cm of rain per year so it is quite drought tolerant.
- Latin name is Ceratonia Siliqua. Family Name is Caesalpiniaceae.
- The carob is an evergreen tree often used as a shade tree.
- Its quite popular as a shade tree on farms as the leaves can be used as fodder for animals.
- Makes beautiful furniture.
- The seeds are 35% gum which is known as locust bean gum and is used as a thickener in many products such as cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, industrial oil and in food.
- Italians use the seeds to make rosary beads.
- The gum is used by the Egyptians to bind their mummies.
- The carob tree is part of the legume family.
- Tolerant of most soils except clay as it likes good drainage.
- Very pest resistant.
- Height is usually a minimum of 15 meters and the width of the foliage is the same. Often the shape of the arbor is more of a triangle. Trunk diameter is about 85cm by 20 years of age. Leaves are 2.5-6.5cm in length, dark green and leathery. The foliage sits higher up the trunk leaving the trunk free to walk around.
- In the wild the female tree is the fruiting one so there would need to be a mix of male and female trees. However now, carob trees you buy from the nursery are supposed to be a male/female mix so you should only need 1 tree to gain fruit.
