Origins

• The horseradish or moringa tree hails from dry coastal forests across tropical parts of southern Asia. Fast-growing and long-lived, it's grown as an ornamental flowering tree that also serves as a source of shade and has both nutritional and medicinal uses, as all parts of this tree are edible, according to Margaret Barwick, author of "Tropical and Subtropical Trees."
  
  

Pod Description

• After flowers are pollinated, each pea-like blossoms ripens into a long fruit, botanically a capsule, up to 18 inches long. Resembling a massive green bean on the tree when developing, this pod contains many oily seeds with winged appendages. Since the tree blooms year-round, pods are continually growing and ripening to beige-brown, splitting open and releasing the seeds.
  
  

Uses

• The immature green moringa pods on the tree are colloquially referred to as "drumsticks" and are picked and the pea-like seeds inside eaten like garden peas. The pod, with both skin and seeds, is also chopped raw or boiled and added to dishes such as Madras drumstick curry. Boiled moringa pods taste like asparagus. Fried mature pods taste like peanuts. Dried mature seeds yield an edible oil called Ben oil and is used by watchmakers and in manufacturing perfume, cosmetics, salad oil, soap and machine oil. The nutrition from the pods and other plant parts plays an important role in feeding small children and for new mothers producing nursing milk for infants in developing nations in tropical climates.
  
  

Growing Moringa Pods

• The horseradish tree only grows outdoors in tropical areas where frost never occurs, such as in U.S. Department of Agriculture hardiness zones 10b and warmer. Plant the tree in a full sun exposure in any well-drained soil that never gets soggy. Tolerant of heat and drought, the tree readily flowers and produces pods. A moist soil increases growth and plant lushness, and in some parts of the world this tree escaped cultivation and grows wild.