I love cashew nuts. I am one of those evil persons that picks through the can of mixed nuts and eats all of the cashews. Don't tell my husband, he thinks it is the kids.
Although I have eaten my share of cashews, I never even thought about where they came from and how they grew. Have you?
On a stint to Honduras, I was in a market and saw a fruit that I had never seen before. It was a deep red and yellow with a bright green protrusion at one end that looked like a parrots beak. Upon inquiry, I was told it was a cashew apple.

According to Wikapedia:

The Cashew (Anacardium occidentale) is a tree in the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae. It is widely grown in tropical climates for its cashew nuts and cashew apples. Originally spread from Brazil by the Portuguese, the cashew tree today can be found in all regions with a sufficiently warm and humid climate.

Anacardium occidentale, from Koehler's Medicinal-Plants (1887)What appears on the tree to be the fruit of the cashew tree is an oval to pear-shaped accessory fruit or false fruit that develops from the receptacle of the cashew flower. Called the cashew apple, better known in Central America as "marañón", it ripens into a yellow and/or red structure about the size of a plum or pear (5–11 cm).

The true fruit of the cashew tree is a roughly kidney-shaped or boxing-glove shaped drupe that grows at the end of the pseudofruit. Actually, the drupe develops first on the tree, and then the peduncle expands into the pseudofruit. Within the true fruit is a single seed, the cashew nut. Although a nut in the culinary sense, in the botanical sense the fruit of the cashew is a seed. However, the true fruit is classified as a nut by some botanists.

Cashew fruit contains a potent skin irritant toxin called urushiol (also found in poison-ivy) within the dark green nut shells. This must be removed when the seed inside is processed for consumption; this is done by shelling the nuts, a somewhat hazardous process, and exceedingly painful skin rashes (similar to poison-ivy rashes) among processing workers are common.

In an off-the-shelf package of cashews found in the United States, a 30-gram serving contained 180 calories (750 kilojoules), 70% of which is fat.

No wonder they are more expensive than some other nuts.Now,when I am digging in the can for them, I always think of how many fruit have to be picked for me to get a good handful!