🌿 In Tunisia, #carob & #fig trees are helping fight #wildfires and restore soil

https://resilience-blog.com/2025/05/15/carob-and-fig-trees-nature-based-solutions-to-wildfires-and-soil-erosion-in-tunisia/

https://bsky.app/profile/efimedfacility.bsky.social/post/3lpbu53vb722p

#agriculture #Tunisia

I'm massively behind in all my podcast listening (changes Apple made some years ago to their podcast app contributed to this), so I missed that Alie Ward gave a shoutout to my Carobology episode during the Domestic Phytology episode!

https://www.alieward.com/ologies/carobology #Carob #UrbanForest @plantscience @gardening

Ceratonia siliqua (carob) growing in the front yard of a small Davis apartment building. It provides year 'round evergreen shade. In places like Davis, you need shade the majority of the year now. #DavisCA #UrbanHeatIsland #Carob

TIL the term "pseudomaquis", which seems to have been used in botany/ecology since at least the 1920s.

It's derived from "maquis", which is an ecosystem found in the Mediterranean that includes oak, olive, and carob.

Members of the French Resistance were sometimes called the "maquis" because that's where they hid out.

But I'm still trying to learn what a pseudomaquis is. #Carob

Good news: I found somewhere that has several carob liqueurs and will ship to the US.

Bad news: It costs more than the cost of the liqueurs to have them shipped here. 😦

Clearly I need some Croatian friends sailing to the US... #Carob

Letting a computer translate Croatian for you while looking for Croatian carob liquers has its dangers... #Carob

The #postfire seedling recruitment of the #Carob tree (#Ceratonia siliqua) that I observed 1 month after #fire (left) is thriving 3 years later (right). It's not that common to see this regeneration.
Azuebar fire (2021), eastern #Spain

#IFAzuebar #SerraEspadà @ecology @plants @botany @wildfirescience @plantscience @nature @biodiversity @conservation

I don't think my question about historical use of carob pods as "candy" in the US was gotten to, but new Ologies episode just launched!

https://www.alieward.com/ologies/confectionology #Carob #Candy

Meanwhile, over at the accidental end of the Mediterranean diet, I find that mushroom pasta with a drizzle of #carob syrup is not actually bad but not actually good, so I must learn to pay more attention when sleepily handling #oliveOil bottles.

#thingsThatGoGlugInTheNight

It's a little bedraggled because growing up out of a small hole in the concrete isn't ideal for trees, but look at this CHONKER of a carob tree casting much-needed shade in #DavisCA

#UrbanForest #Carob

Here's another raceme of flowers, emerging from higher up on the trunk. Carob is also ramiflorous, with racemes emerging directing out of branches as well.

These racemes tend to repeat year after year in the same spots.

@plantscience #Carob #Botany

One of the things cacao and carob share in common is that they're cauliflorous - they can bloom directly from the trunk.

This hermaphrodite carob is a little extreme, not even waiting to get high up off the ground before sending out a raceme of flowers.

Hermaphrodite carobs are relatively rare. Most carob trees make either male or female flowers. #Botany #Carob @plantscience

Carob is native to the Mediterranean and much of California has a Mediterranean climate where carob grows well. It isn't as fussy about soils as some of our crops are. It provides evergreen shade as our climate grows ever hotter. It produces a seed crop, a fruit crop, and when it finally dies, the wood is beautiful and highly sought after since there's no carob lumber industry catering to it.

Most of Australia's commercial carob cultivars were selected in California. #Carob #Botany

This specimen is hermaphrodite, which is fairly rare in carob. That is, the flowers are perfect, having both male and female parts. Even if you can't see up close because the flowers are higher in the tree, the "fuzziness" of the flower racemes indicate male reproductive parts, yet the tree has fruit (pods) so the flowers have to have both male and female parts.

This is a street tree because California still refuses to invest in carob, which is a very foolish thing.
#Carob #Botany #UrbanForest

It's both carob harvest and carob blooming seasons in Davis, babay! #Carob #DavisCA #Botany #UrbanForest

@adamhsparks I'm not going to force folks to eat carob, however, I will say that carob can be great if you're not told to think of it as chocolate. And I hope folks will make the difference between being mad at carob for being carob and being mad at adults in their lives for lying to them. #Carob

In the US, there's a history of people's parents in the '70s and '80s lying to them as kids, trying to pass carob off as chocolate. And that childhood resentment at being lied to by a trusted family member has tarred a quite nice food product with many uses.

As a result, even health food stores barely carry it anymore.

Carob and cacao are both plants. How healthy either of them are depend on how they're prepared. #Carob

When I visit a health food or other store that many would associate with carob, I always look to see if they actually have some, what kind and what price it is.

This is the old school health food store Down Home Market in Fort Bragg, CA, founded in 1974. Most of what they have are various cacao products. There were two carob products - chips and powder. Both are currently more expensive than much of the chocolate was. #Carob

@dubious_dragon @susannah carob and sometimes carob & nut filling. These are often published in the original languages, though, which can make things difficult for English speakers who don't know Slavic languages.

This video recipe is all just the amounts with visuals, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go_rX76RJcg

There are some nice Portuguese recipes for flourless carob/almond "cakes" and more around.

I've also used carob syrup with soy sauce to make a dipping sauce for gyoza, for ex.

#carob