Photo: THOR — CC BY 2.0 · source
Survives zone 7 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Needs long, hot, dry summers to crop well — cool or humid summers give a poor or absent harvest even where winters are mild enough. The nut is enclosed in a fleshy hull that blushes rosy-pink to red as it ripens, then splits to reveal the familiar partly-opened shell.
- Hardiness
- Zone 7–9
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Nut
- Ripens
- Late summer–autumn
- Mature size
- 7–10 m tall
- Light
- Full sun
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.5, tolerant of poor, calcareous soil
- Environment
- Arid
- Native range
- Central Asia to Afghanistan and Iran — arid ground with hot dry summers and cold winters; domesticated roughly 3,000 years ago and long since spread across the Mediterranean basin.
- Status
- Cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 5–10 yrs to a first crop; peak production at 10–20 yrs
- Growth speed
- Slow — and slow to bear, with five to ten years to a first crop
- Spacing
- 600 cm (236 in) apart — about 36 m² (388 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Pinnately compound, 3–5 thick, leathery, dusty-green leaflets with a slightly waxy texture; gold to reddish fall color
- Root system
- A deep, powerful taproot with wide laterals, reaching far down for water — the drought tolerance the crop is famous for, and also why pistachios are planted as young grafted trees and resent any root disturbance. Waterlogging kills them faster than drought ever will.
- Fruit description
- Oval nuts in heavy, grape-like clusters, each in a hard shell inside a fleshy hull that turns rosy-pink to red when ripe
- Propagation
- Seed (soak 24 hours, then sow 5–8 cm deep — seedlings vary and are usually grafted), or grafting named cultivars onto seedling rootstock.
- Pollination
- DIOECIOUS — needs male and female plants
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Growing tips. Extremely drought-tolerant and well suited to poor, calcareous soil once established — the difficulty is less the soil than the climate, since it genuinely needs a long hot dry summer to fruit well. Slow to bear: expect a first small crop around 5–10 years, with peak production not until 10–20 years.
Grow journal
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