In ancient Greece, a hole was drilled in the trunks of almond trees into which plugs of pine tree wood were inserted.
Almond trees are native to the mountains of Central Asia, and it was only by a spontaneous mutation around 4,000 years ago that the nuts – actually the almond tree’s seeds – were rendered edible in their raw state.
Almonds are divided into two types: bitter and sweet. Bitter almonds contain a high concentration of cyanide, so eating them raw will make you sick or, if ingested in sufficient quantity, kill you. Therefore, it is unwise to eat almonds from wild or volunteer trees. Incidentally, even sweet almonds contain a trace amount of cyanide, but not enough to be toxic. Volunteer sweet almond trees appear often enough. However, if they are growing in the vicinity of wild trees, caution must be exercised in sampling their nuts. If the flowers of sweet almond trees are pollinated with pollen from their bitter almond cousins, the resulting nuts are likely to be poisonous. In 2019, Spanish geneticists mapped the genomes of bitter and sweet almonds and determined that a single gene was responsible for almond bitterness. The identification of this gene has sped up the process of almond breeding. Formerly, it was only by tasting the nuts of new varieties that you would know whether the tree was marketable. Meanwhile, three to four years went by, since that is the time it takes for an almond tree planted from a seed to produce nuts. Having identified the bitterness gene, it is now possible to take a leaf from a young seedling and determine whether its DNA contains it; if it does, the plant in question is no longer an edible variety candidate. At a hunter-gatherer site discovered in 1989 near the Sea of Galilee, 19,000-year-old almonds were dug up from human food storehouses and tested, revealing that they harbored the bitterness gene. Finding such nuts indicates that they were eaten at that time but must have undergone cooking processes — whether boiling or roasting — that effectively remove cyanide. Even today, almond extract, used in baking and as an ingredient of marzipan, is made from oil of bitter almonds whose toxicity has been neutralized. In ancient Greece, a hole was drilled in the trunks of almond trees into which plugs of pine tree wood were inserted. This practice prevented trees from synthesizing cyanide to a toxic extent and rendered their nuts edible. It was a demonstration of the Greeks’ understanding that stress can benefit the quality of horticultural crops. A contemporary example of how stress affects nut quality is found in the 93-acre almond orchard of Rusty Hall in Paso Robles. The variety he grows is known as Hall’s Hardy and is a peach-almond hybrid. The orchard is dry farmed, meaning it is not irrigated other than by winter rain, which averages 14-15 inches, the same as that of Los Angeles. Fruits and nuts are often more flavorful when dry-farmed since the compounds that give them flavor are more concentrated than when grown under irrigation. The nuts from Hall’s trees have an intense flavor – too intense for some palates – akin to that of almond extract or marzipan. You can purchase Hall’s uniquely flavored almond brittle, almond butter, and almond biscotti at Almonds have not traditionally been planted in Southern California for five reasons. First, they need copious amounts of water to produce large crops. Second, you need two varieties — Nonpareil and Mission are paired in nearly all of California’s almond orchards — to produce a crop. Third, the chilling requirement of four to five hundred hours — the number of winter hours below 45 degrees needed for flowering to occur — eliminates much of Los Angeles as an appropriate locale for nut production. Fourth, honey bees are essential in the pollination of these almond varieties, and they may not be present in sufficient numbers for proper pollination to occur; in commercial orchards, two hives to the acre are utilized to ensure maximum pollination. Fifth, since flowering occurs so early, blossoms can be knocked off or contaminated by fungus due to late winter rains or killed by a late frost when the trees are already in bloom. Enter Independence, an almond variety that is self-fertile, meaning it can produce nuts on its own without needing another variety for pollination purposes. It can even pollinate itself without the assistance of bees. However, it will produce up to 60% more nuts when another Independence tree is planted alongside it, and the presence of bees will also increase yield. Although its winter chill requirement is less than that of traditional almond varieties, Independence would still produce most reliably in areas where upwards of 400 winter chill hours are measured, such as the Antelope and Santa Clarita Valleys, foothill communities from Granada Hills to Claremont, and the Inland Empire. This variety has yet to be made available to homeowners, but we can hope that it will be in the not-too-distant future. Meanwhile, All-in-One is a self-fertile, low-chill almond variety that is available. You can find it at retail nurseries supplied by Dave Wilson Nursery . Its fragrant yellow blooms, whose production increases as the weather warms, look like a cross between those of a penstemon and a snapdragon, which are familial kin. Its decorous leaves are not even an inch long. This plant can grow as tall as eight feet and is impervious to drought. However, it will lose its leaves in the summer to conserve moisture, and so to keep it fresh and blooming, soak it on an occasional basis in hot weather. You can find yellow bush penstemon at the Theodore Payne Foundation Nursery in Sun Valley When you reach their website, sign up for their annual tour of homes with native plant gardens which will occur on April 11 and 12.This simple seed-starting trick helps tough-coated seeds sprout fasterHorse racing: Needing a new sport to play, handicapper picks a winnerFamily of girl who died after Reseda school fight files claim, says LAUSD failed to stop bullyingCosta Mesa mountain biker, 25, dies a month after rattlesnake bite on Irvine trailThings to do in the San Fernando Valley, LA area, March 12-20
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