[Illustration: THE BRAZIL NUT.]
Every one is acquainted with the hard-shelled, triangular fruit called the
Brazil nut, but there are, perhaps, but few who know anything about the
tree that produces it, or its mode of growth. The Brazil nut tree belongs
to a genus of Lecythidaceæ of which there is only one species,
_Bertholletia excelsa_. This tree is a native of Guiana, Venezuela, and
Brazil. It forms large forests on the banks of the Amazons and Rio Negro,
and likewise about Esmeraldas, on the Orinoco, where the natives call it
_juvia_. The natives of Brazil call the fruit _capucaya_, while to the
Portuguese it is known as _castaña de marañon_.
The tree is one of the most majestic in the South American forests,
attaining a height of 100 or 150 feet. Its trunk is straight and
cylindrical, and measures about 3 or 4 feet in diameter. The bark is
grayish and very even. At a distance, the tree somewhat resembles a
chestnut. Its branches are alternate, open, very long, and droop toward the
earth. The leaves are alternate, oblong, short petioled, nearly coriaceous,
about 2 feet long by 6 inches wide, entire or undivided, and of a bright
green color. The flowers have a two-parted, deciduous calyx, six unequal
cream-colored petals, and numerous stamens united into a broad, hood-shaped
mass, those at the base being fertile, and the upper ones sterile.
The fruit is nearly orbicular, and about 6 inches in diameter, and has a
hard shell about half an inch thick, which contains from 18 to 24
triangular, wrinkled seeds that are so beautifully packed within the shell
that when once disturbed it is impossible to replace them. When these
fruits are ripe, they fall from the tree and are collected into heaps by
troops of Indians called _Castanhieros_, who visit the forests at the
proper season of the year expressly for this purpose. They are then split
open with an ax, and the seeds (the Brazil nuts of commerce) taken out and
packed in baskets for transportation to Para in the native canoes. The
"meat" that the Brazil nut contains consists of a white substance of the
same nature as that of the common almond, and which is good to eat when
fresh, but which, by reason of its very oily nature, soon gets rancid.
Besides its use as an article of dessert, a bland oil, used by watchmakers
and artists, is obtained from the nut by pressure. Brazil nuts form a
considerable article of export from the port of Para, whence they are
sometimes called Para nuts.
The Brazil nut tree remained for a long time unknown to European botanists,
although the fruit has been from a very remote epoch consumed in large
quantities in certain southern countries of the New World. The first
description of the tree we owe to Humboldt and Bonpland, who established
the genus and species in the botanical part of the account of their voyage.
The genus is dedicated to the illustrious Berthollet.
"We were very fortunate," say these authors, "to find some of these nuts in
our travels on the Orinoco. For three months we had been living on nothing
but poor chocolate and rice cooked in water, always without butter, and
often without salt, when we procured a large quantity of the fresh fruits
of the _Bertholletia_. It was along in June, and the natives had just
gathered them."
The formation of a large woody fruit, often in the shape of an urn, from
which the top spontaneously separates in the form of a lid, is one of the
characteristics of the order Lecythidaceæ, which includes the _Couronpita
Guianensis_, or "cannon ball tree"; the gigantic _Lecythis ollaria_, or
"monkey-pot tree," whose great woody pericarps serve as drinking vessels;
and the _Lecythis Zabucajo_, whose fruit is known in the market as sapucaia
nuts, and is greatly superior to the closely allied Brazil nuts as regards
flavor and ease of digestion.
All the trees of this order are natives of South America, and especially of
Guiana.
* * * * *