Almond Powder

The almond is a small , growing to between 4 and 10 meters in height, with a trunk of up to 30 centimetres in diameter. The young shoots are green at first, becoming purplish where exposed to sunlight, then grey in their second year. The are 1 cm long and 1.24 cm broad, with a serrated margin and a 2.5 cm . The are white or pale pink, 35 cm diameter with five petals, produced singly or in pairs before the leaves in early spring.

The is a 3.56 cm long, with a downy outer coat. The outer covering or , fleshy in other members of Prunus such as the and , is instead a leathery grey-green coating called the hull, which contains inside a hard shell, and the edible seed, commonly called a in culinary terms. Generally, one seed is present, but occasionally there are two. In botanical terms, an almond is not a . The reticulated hard woody shell (like the outside of a peach pit) surrounding the edible seed is called the . The fruit is mature in the autumn, 78 months after flowering