Homegrown macadamia nuts! Most people associate this delicious and expensive nut with Hawaii, but macadamias actually thrive in many warm-climate areas around the world, including central and southern Florida. There's actually a zone in central Florida where the ranges of macadamia and pecan overlap; lucky gardeners in this area can grow two different types of world-class nuts in their back yards. But while pecans are easy to crack with any hand-held nut-cracker, macadamias have a shell that's so hard it defies belief. I'm sure there are better ways to do this, but when I've had a supply of freshly-harvested macadamias, I've sometimes resorted to hitting them with a hammer. Hard. But once you get that shell cracked, inside is the familiar white macadamia nut, with its creamy-soft delicious flavor. Native to Australia, commercial varieties of macadamia are actually two closely related species, Macadamia integrifolia and Macadamia tetraphylla, and hybrids between the two. The nuts in the picture are on a tree in a friend's yard in Orlando, and the tree appears to be Macadamia tetraphylla. I've succeeded in propagating this tree by cuttings, and I now have a number of small plants of it growing. Macadamia nuts are good food to eat; their oil is high in the same kind of healthful monounsaturated fats that are in olive oil. #macadamia #macadamianut #macadamianuts #Macadamiaintegrifolia #Macadamiatetraphylla #macadamiatree