The cashew is a tree in the family Anacardiaceae

Anacardiaceae

Anacardiaceae are a family of flowering plants bearing fruits that are drupes and in some cases producing urushiol, an irritant. Anacardiaceae include numerous genera with several of economic importance. Notable plants in this family include cashew , mango, poison ivy, sumac, smoke tree, and marula...

. Its English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 name derives from the Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

 name for the fruit of the cashew tree, caju, which in turn derives from the indigenous Tupi

Tupian languages

The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani.-History, members and classification:...

 name, acajú. It is now widely grown in tropical climate

Tropical climate

A tropical climate is a climate of the tropics. In the Köppen climate classification it is a non-arid climate in which all twelve months have mean temperatures above...

s for its cashew nuts and cashew apples.
The name Anacardium refers to the shape of the fruit, which looks like an inverted heart (ana means "upwards" and -cardium means "heart").