Wild Barcelona: Seeds worth their weight in gold

On September walks in the city’s parched parks and surroundings, strollers may come across a strange tree eccentrically sprouting reddish-green flowers directly from its trunk and branches. This is the carob tree (algarrobo in Castilian, garrofer in Catalan), a vestige of Barcelona’s agricultural past.

The fruit of this fire- and drought-resistant tree, the carob pod, has been cultivated for thousands of years. In recent Spanish history, it was a valuable recourse during famine, used as a substitute for coffee and chocolate, as many older Barcelona residents with long memories will be able to recall. The pods take a full year to develop and give off a deep, rich chocolatey aroma. In parts of rural Catalunya, children would put carob pods out on January 5th, to feed the camels carrying the Three Kings.

Few new carob trees are planted today, as it takes 15 years before they begin to produce fruit. Old carob orchards, however, are still economically productive. Their seeds are ground down and used to obtain galactomannon, better known as E410 or locust bean gum (LBG). There’s still a small farm with productive carobs in the Collserola near Sant Joan Despí.

Curiously, the term ‘carat’ is derived from the carob. In the ancient world, gold and gemstones were weighed against its seeds. The system was standardised in late Roman times when the pure gold coin known as the solidus weighed 24 carob seeds. From there, the carat also became a measure of purity for gold, with 24 carats meaning 100-percent gold.

Carobs are not the only fruit trees remaining in Barcelona. Hidden by younger trees or tamed in formal gardens are a host of others: olive, fig, almond, hazel, plum and apple. Until recently, Barcelona was bordered by a patchwork of farms, which supplied the city with fruit and vegetables. The farms in the Collserola were abandoned to scrub, and in the city they have almost completely disappeared under concrete, but you can still see signs of this agricultural past. In the Collserola, these trees are a reminder that this wilder Barcelona was once intensely farmed and exploited.

Nick Lloyd and Lucy Brzoska write for www.iberianature.com and run nature tours in Barcelona.

First published September 2009.