Carob (Ceratonia siliqua) is a member of the legume family that is very productive of large 6 to12"+ long pods that have a sweet nutritious pulp and hard seeds. The pods are ground to make a flour that is used to make cakes, breads, ice cream and other desserts and food products. The seeds are used to make locust bean gum, which has many uses. The pods are also widely used as a livestock feed for cattle, goats pigs and other livestock. This makes it an excellent tree in silvacultural plantings where animals can graze below and around the trees throughout the year and then reap the reward of the sweet and tasty pods as they fall in the winter. The trees are deep rooted, drought tolerant and being native to the warmer Mediterranean region can tolerate high heat. Seedling carob trees have male and female flowers on separate trees, so traditionally at least 2 trees are needed for pollination. Seedling trees are also known to be very slow to mature and produce fruit, sometimes taking 2 decades before they start to flower. As such grafted named cultivars are much superior for planting if the fruit crop is desired as they will fruit in just a few years. Many are self fertile too, thus requiring only 1 tree to produce pods. Unfortunately until now these have been extremely hard to find in the US. While California had a robust trial planting of superior named varieties of carob back in the 1960's called the Coit collection, it was tragically bulldozed in the 80's and the varieties were lost here. We have recently embarked on a challenging project to bring many of these great varieties back. Thanks to Henry Ebenshade of Carobs Australia, who brought the Coit Collection to Australia back in the 80's before it was destroyed we were able to return many of these varieties back to the US. It took a lot of perseverance as we had to do a 2 year quarantine project with the US Dept. of Agriculture, as well as other challenges. Carob makes a beautiful evergreen tree well suited to many western climates where the temperatures don't go below 18F. It will start to suffer damage at temperatures below 25, but if well established will come back quickly. Can grow up to 55 feet tall. Hardy zone 8b-10.