The internet just realized this is how cashews grow and people are stunned
A beloved nut best known when it's been roasted and salted, blended into butter or made into a dairy-free beverage has shocked the internet with it's nutty appearance of how it grows.
Is it an apple? Is it a seed? The answer is yes.
When someone posted a photo of the tropical evergreen tree that bears the curvy pod, people went nuts.
Twitter users weighed in on the moment they learned that the nut is actually a seed within a hard shell that stems from the cashew apple.
Even a competing nut chimed in -- the well dressed Mr. Peanut replied on Twitter "Nuts, right?!"
Some other responses compared its appearance to a grumpy old man, which isn't that far fetched since the shells themselves are poisonous.
But the more surprising fact to many was that this whole time the coveted ingredient from a plate of party nuts isn't even a nut, it's a seed from a fruit.
"Unlike many other nuts and seeds, the cashew grows outside the fruit instead of inside, within a kidney-shaped drupe that hangs at the end of the cashew apple’s base," according to researchers at University of California, Davis. "This drupe is considered the 'true' fruit of the tree while the cashew apple is thought of as an accessory or 'false' fruit."
