Important Middle Earth Questions: Is There Chocolate In Middle Earth?

Is there chocolate in middle earth?

So, one of the folks I follow on tumblr asked this question this morning, and like the inquisitive person I am, I decided to do some research on this interesting and important question. Let’s explore this a little, shall we?

Chocolate as we know it comes from the seedpods of Theobroma cacao, an evergreen tree whose generic name comes from the Greek for ‘food of the gods.’ (Nice job, Carl Linneaus.) The tree is pollinated, flowers, and produces a fruit whose large seedpods form the basis for chocolate. The fruit is gathered, and the seedpods are extracted. They are then fermented, and quickly dried, before being roasted, hulled, and ground up, and turned into the first step on the road to chocolate.

All of this doesn’t matter to us at all if Theobroma cacao can’t grow.

 Above is a map detailing cacao output around the world. Notice the concentration in equatorial climates. My good friends over at Wikipedia confirm this -- “Cacao trees will grow in a limited geographical zone, of approximately 20 degrees to the north and south of the Equator. Nearly 70% of the world crop is grown in West Africa.” [source]

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew inform us “In its natural habitat, cocoa grows in the understory of evergreen tropical rainforest. It often grows in clumps along river banks, where the roots may be flooded for long periods of the year. Cocoa grows at low elevations, usually below 300 metres above sea level, in areas with 1,000 to 3,000 mm rainfall per year.” [source]

So. Equatorial climates, evergreen tropical rainforest, river banks, low elevations with lots of rain. That's what we need here.

Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle Earth has several maps pertaining to vegetation, climate and season conditions in Middle Earth. Based on the pieces of information she gathered from what one hopes to be a close reading of Tolkien’s work, she suggests that Gondor, the southernmost region Tolkien’s work touches on in any detail, has mild winters and hot, dry summers, similar to the climate of the Mediterranean and Southern California. She also suggests that further south of Gondor, in Harad, is arid grassland, similar to what one might find in the Great Plains region or in Central Asia.

Nowhere in her maps is any mention made of rainforest, or of a climate with a rainfall level significant enough to support a rainforest. (Those would make really cool Ents, though, don’t you think?) >So, in answer to the question, “Does Middle Earth have chocolate” my answer is… No, probably not in the known world. Now, Tolkien doesn’t ever explore whether there’s something farther south after Harad.  Maybe there are equatorial climates and rainforests as one goes deeper into the interior. (Maybe that can be a subject for a fanfic – explorer/diplomat goes to Harad after the king returns, comes back with cacao beans. Cue new fad for drinking chocolate in Gondor.) One has also to consider whether Tolkien considered his world to exist on a globe or on a flat plain. If the flat plain, is it meteorologically possible to have an equatorial climate, given that all the other climates represented in Middle Earth don’t have such conditions? I’m not a meteorologist or a physicist, so I don’t know and can’t speculate. Let me offer you some honeycakes in consolation. I do know Middle Earth has bees.