The Curious Story of the Carob Tree

If you travel along the Lycian coast, you may one day wander past a tree with the strangest warm smell in early spring. In summer, it hangs heavy with clusters of green bean-like pods. By autumn those same pods have turned into wrinkled brown things that look like dried bananas and feel almost as hard as wood.

This is the carob tree.

Most travellers know carob only from the health food aisle of the supermarket, somewhere between cocoa substitutes and products that promise a healthier life. Or perhaps their parents were California hippies who made surprisingly good brownies and other experiments with it.

If you are the sort of person who reads ingredient labels, you have probably come across carob seed flour without even realizing it. It is used as a natural thickener in everything from ice cream to sauces.

Here in Türkiye, carob is known as Keçiboynuzu, literally "goat's horn", a name inspired by the shape of the pods. It is a local favourite, boiled into syrup and eaten as a sweet breakfast spread mixed with tahini, or used as a traditional remedy for sore throats.

And of course, local folklore credits it with all sorts of miraculous qualities, including its reputation as the poor man's rocket fuel.

Around the Mediterranean almost everyone knows carob from childhood. Many remember chewing the sweet pods as a snack, while older generations still tell stories of harder times when carob was not a treat but a necessity.

Not all carobs taste the same. Wild trees often produce dry, rather unimpressive pods, while cultivated varieties can be surprisingly juicy, sweet and full of flavour.

Yet the most remarkable fact about carob is something most people never hear.

Every piece of jewellery you have ever worn still carries its name.

Carob seeds are remarkably consistent in weight. For centuries they were used around the Mediterranean and the Near East as a reference for weighing gold, gemstones and other precious goods. The Ancient Greeks called the seed keration, meaning "little horn". Through centuries of trade this eventually became the modern word carat.

So the next time someone tells you that a diamond weighs one carat, they are unknowingly referring to a humble Mediterranean tree that fed shepherds, sweetened breakfasts, survived droughts and helped merchants weigh their gold long before modern scales existed.

Not bad for a funny-looking goat horn hanging from a tree on a dusty Lycian hillside.