Treesify

Trees · Fabaceae

Carob

Ceratonia siliqua

Spanish AlgarroboCatalan GarroferIntroduced5–10 mEvergreen

Tree of the carob
Tree · Photo: S. Rae, CC BY 2.0

An evergreen tree with leaves of thick, round leaflets and long brown pods.

The leaf

The leaf is made up of two to five pairs of rounded or oval leaflets, thick, glossy on top and smooth-edged. There is no leaflet at the tip. It is dark green all year round.

The bark

The bark is grey-brown, smooth on young branches and rough and cracked on old trunks, which are usually thick and twisted.

The fruit

The fruit is the carob, a long, flat, slightly curved pod ten to twenty centimetres long. It is green in summer and dark brown and hard when ripe; the sweet pulp surrounds very hard seeds.

The flower

It flowers in autumn. The flowers are small, reddish or greenish, without petals, and grow in short clusters straight from the old branches and the trunk.

  1. Jan
  2. Feb
  3. Mar
  4. Apr
  5. May
  6. Jun
  7. Jul
  8. Aug
  9. Sep
  10. Oct
  11. Nov
  12. Dec

Habit

A tree with a short, thick trunk and a broad, rounded, very dense crown that casts deep shade.

Where it grows

It needs mild winters. In Catalonia it has been grown since ancient times along the coast and in the southern lowlands, such as the Camp de Tarragona, the Baix Ebre and the Montsià, and also in the Garraf and the Baix Penedès.

What it can be mistaken for

The honey locust also bears long pods, but it loses its leaves in winter, has very small leaflets and usually has thorns. The black locust has thinner leaflets, with one at the tip, and thorns on its branches.

A story

The word carat comes from the Greek keration, the name for the carob seed, which was used to weigh precious stones. Carob pods have been used as animal feed and, in times of famine, as food for people too.

Find out more

Photos from Wikimedia Commons: