Cocoa
The cocoa tree (also known as cacao) originated in the jungles of Central and South America, but humans spread them across the world centuries ago due to the delicious chocolate desserts they could make from the plant's seeds. As the world warmed, people carried these seeds out of the traditional tropical zones and into former temperate zones.
Shade-loving trees, cocoa trees generally grow as part of an understory in mature tropical forests. They rely on tiny midges to pollinate their flowers. Monkeys breaking the seed pods to eat the pulp inside will frequently disperse seeds, propagating the tree without human help.
#Human usage
People of the Fifth World harvest, ferment, and dry the seeds of the cocoa tree to make chocolate, which they generally make into desserts. Common chocolate desserts include beverages (mixed with coconut milk, vanilla, sugar cane juice or honey for sweetener, and occasionally coffee). Sometimes they mix chocolate with chili pepper, as in traditional Mayan recipes.
#Specialization
A community that specializes in relation to cocoa will invariably tend towards horticulture, due to the intensive processing cocoa seeds require to make chocolate, and therefore live in settled villages. These communities almost always practice slash-and-burn agriculture, growing different guilds of plants at different stages and moving around the jungle in a regular cycle. This often includes cocoa trees at the latest stage in the cycle, planted in the shade beneath tall fruit and/or hardwood trees. They often plant cocoa with coffee and vanilla, other shade-loving plants (who coincidentally produce beans that also taste great with cocoa). Because cocoa trees require shade from a mature canopy, such a community would take particular care to keep the forest healthy, strong, and diverse.
A community specializing in relation to cocoa may claim descent from the Mayans, and follow in their ancestors' tradition of holding cocoa sacred.