Argan

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

Argan benefits from insect pollination and Moroccan cooperatives increasingly combine beekeeping with oil production. The traditional Inzerki apiary in the argan country, a terraced mud-and-stone structure holding thousands of hives, is among the largest and oldest collective apiaries in the world.

Worth knowing

A good spring nectar source in a semi-arid landscape with few alternatives.

Flowering

In flower

April to June (northern hemisphere)

A spring flow, and flowering is irregular between years depending on rainfall.

When nectar flows

Substantial where the forest is intact, from small flowers borne in quantity.

Year-to-year variation

Rainfall-dependent and irregular. The oil is the more important product.

What it does to the honey

Contributes a roasted-nut character with a light resinous edge, genuinely reminiscent of the oil.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun on poor dry stony soil, extremely drought-tolerant, and adapted to a semi-arid Mediterranean climate.

Size

8-10 m tall, with a broad spreading crown and an age often measured in centuries.

Native range

The Souss valley and Anti-Atlas of southwestern Morocco, and endemic to that area.

Suits

Large gardens

• Extremely slow-growing and long-lived.
• Goats climb into the branches to browse the fruit, which is both a famous image and a genuine regeneration problem.
• Frost-tender and unsuited to cool temperate gardens.

What it looks like

A gnarled spiny evergreen tree with small leathery leaves and clusters of small greenish-yellow flowers, followed by fleshy fruits containing a very hard nut.