- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Published on: February 8, 2019
If you like chocolate, thank the midges.
These tiny flies (about 1 to 3mm) pollinate the intricate flowers of the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao. From those seed pods, known as cocoa beans, come the chocolate that we crave. In fact, we Americans consume 2.8 billion pounds of chocolate every year, or about 11 pounds per person, according to chocolatestore.com. For Valentine's Day, we purchase some 58 million pounds!
Thank you, midges!
The cacao tree thrives in parts of Central America, South America, Africa and Asia, but there's also one thriving in the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory, off Kleiber Hall Drive, UC Davis campus. You can see the...
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Tags: cacao tree (1), Ceratopogonidae (1), chocolate (1), chocolate midges (1), Ernesto Sandoval (4), midges (1), Theobroma cacao (1), UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day (53), UC Davis Botanical Conservatory (2)
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