Aren't you happy to know that chocolate is good for you and is a sex substitute? Do you think something this wonderful just grows on trees? Well, yes, it does.

Chocolate is made from the pods of cacao plants (Theobroma cacao), which you can see in Foster Botanical Garden's economic garden. They are a small tree or large shrub, and we grow them under the nitrogen-rich shade of the pretty pink-flowered tree known as madre de cacao (mother of chocolate).

Tomorrow, Foster Botanical Garden highlights chocolate at Nutcracker Sweet, its first-ever holiday gift sale, organized by Friends of Hono-lulu Botanical Gardens board member Grace Dixon.

You'll learn everything you need to know about chocolate — from cultivating cacao plants to the finished product, which you can sample at tastings.

Dole Food Co.'s cacao expert Mike Conway (the company grows the crop in Waialua), will be on hand to show off the pretty pods and talk about how they are grown, handled and processed into chocolate.

And you can try all kinds of permutations of chocolate from local vendors as well as producers who are part of the Hawaii Farm Bureau.

Martha Sanchez of the Latino market Mercado de la Raza will demonstrate how to make Mexican hot chocolate and chocolate tamales.

Y. Hata's chef Ernesto Limcaco will make champerado, a rice and chocolate Filipino breakfast treat.

Kim Moore from Pupukea will have fudge, along with vanilla extract and beans, and macadamia cookies.

On the nonchocolate list will be spice mixes, chutneys and syrups. And Lion Coffee will be selling its special holiday blend — called Nutcracker Sweet.

And of course, the sale includes lots of plants — and things made from plants.

After months of collecting plant materials for a wreath class at Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden, Al Lum has been making wreaths like a manic menehune. Sculptor and landscape architect Leland Miyano has fashioned miniature Christmas trees from the fabulous palms that he works with.

Select plant vendors include Dennis Kim's Hawaiian plants — look for his choice 'ohi'a lehua varieties. Olomana Tropicals will offer special heliconias, gingers and bromeliads. Also available: Peter de Mello's Tillandsias, Alvin Tsuruda's holiday anthuriums, unusual 'ohe from the Big Island's Quindembo Bamboo, Waiahole Botanicals' hybrid ti, Kevin Mulkern's water-garden plants and aquatics, Hawaiian plants from Pisces Pacifica and Hui ku Maoli Ola, and Hawaii Pacific Orchids' Ken Ibara will have ... orchids.

Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden nursery volunteers have been busy raising saplings. On sale will be cacao, black pepper, nutmeg, cloves, monkeypod, Brazil nut and cashew trees.

Organic farmer Dave Delventhal grows gourmet baby lettuce in whimsical containers. When he thins out his commercial crops of keiki greens, rather than wasting the ones he pulls out, he pots them for your eating and holiday-display pleasure.

Longtime Honolulu botanical gardens volunteers Jean and John White have grown mangroves as potted ornamentals. The natural weed controller in marshy areas also make an unusual and easy-to-care-for house or office plant.

Make your living gift complete with a planter — members of the Hawaii Potters Guild will be on hand with their wares.

But Dixon may be most proud of the event's logo — a stylized nutcracker portrait, which you can get emblazoned on a (brown, of course) T-shirt to go with it.

Heidi Bornhorst is a sustainable-landscape consultant. Submit questions to islandlife@honoluluadvertiser.com or Island Life, The Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. Letters may be published or distributed in print, electronic or other forms.