The Amazing Story Behind The Brazil Nut

I love nuts. And, while you’re all chuckling at your inner “why am I not surprised?” jokes, I’ll go on to say that Brazil nuts have always been one of my favorite kinds. Mind you, this is in direct contrast to almost everyone I grew up around. A cultural distaste, I suspect, that derives from the Brazil nut’s rather unfortunate nickname.

But I had no idea what a true miracle of nature they were until I watched the National Geographic Channel’s awesome How Nature Works program the other night. Which, as you can see from the show’s web page blurb, dealt with issues far beyond the story behind one of my favorite nuts…

“Our planet is home to over ten million species, but not one of them can survive on its own. How Nature Works sheds new light on the relationships among plants and animals that keep our world spinning. Travel high up into the trees of East Africa with the giraffes and witness how their ability to eat around termites makes homes for the geckos. Journey deep into the forests of North America where a caterpillar munches holes in leaves that allow for essential light to penetrate the forest floor.”

But it wasn’t until they got around to the Brazil nut story that I really began to pay attention. That was because of the unlikely symbiotic relationship between the Brazil nut tree, its flowers and seed pods, a rainforest Orchid called Coryanthes vasquezii, the sex lives of Euglossa Orchid bees, and feeding habits of a tropical rodent called Agouti!

Unfortunately, try as I might, I was unable to find video from the show to post here. So, I’m going to attempt tell the story my way, beginning with these nice images…

Brazil nuts

The Brazil nut tree

Brazil nut seed pods

The Agouti

Brazil nut seed pods

Brazil nut tree flowers

Coryanthes vasquezii Orchid

Euglossa Orchid bees

Brazil nut tree pollination

Images via Senior Study: Fruits & Nuts, ARKive, OrchidWeb, Brazil nuts nutrition facts, The Brazil Nut Industry, and ZooKeys

Despite it’s name, the Brazil nut tree is indigenous throughout the Amazon rainforests of South America, and is one of the true giants of that region. Living as long as 100 years and growing to heights of 150 feet or more, a single mature tree can produce more than 250 pounds of nuts a year, in seed pods weighing nearly 5 pounds apiece, each containing as many as 2 dozen individual nuts.

Despite is awesome longevity, size, and value to nuts lover’s all over the world – not to mention its importance to the nearly $50 million per year Brazil nut industry – this Amazonian giant has a perilous existence. Facing threats not only from human deforestation and competing species, the tree’s very own method of reproduction makes it extremely vulnerable to even the smallest changes in the ecosystem it lives in.

First of all, the Brazil nut tree flowers for only a single day each year. And the flowers are so tough to deal with that only the female Euglossa Orchid bee has the strength required to get to the nectar inside to make pollination possible. But the existence of this very muscular (and finicky) bee is entirely dependent on its ability to mate, and it mates, of course, with only the very best smelling males of her species!

And to achieve just the right degree of fragrance, the male Euglossa bees are forced to spend most of their time pollinating the Coryanthes vasquezii variety of Orchid – not for its nectar, mind you, but to gather the flower’s scent, using forearms specifically evolved for that purpose, which it then carries around in pockets on its hind legs that have evolved specifically for that purpose as well – all in the hope of being selected as a suitable mate!

After all that, it still takes the seed pod (the “fruit”) a full 14 months to achieve its near 5 pound maturity after the flowers are pollinated. And boy howdy, once that happens, it’s be on the lookout to anyone and anything below!

I think I’ll just let Sir David Attenborough, in this clip from the BBC’s The Private Life of Plants, take us through the next part:

As amazingly complex as the life cycle of the Brazil nut tree is, it wasn’t until scientists actually took the extraordinary step of tying long strings with ribbons at the end around individual seeds and then resealing the pods for Agouti to find and bury (as well as for other Agouti to steal and then re-bury), that they were able to learn exactly how it was that this incredible tree had managed to spread across such a vast region!

And while human harvesting of Brazil nuts might include climbing the trees to retrieve the pods for transport to modern production facilities, the rest of the process still works pretty much the same way it’s done by the Agouti. Because of the delicately balanced ecosystem required for Brazil nut trees to thrive, producing the nuts using traditional farming methods simply hasn’t proven to be economically viable.

So, for those of us who love these nuts, as well as anyone who cares about protecting and maintaining endangered ecosystems, it’s pretty obvious that a proper understanding of nature’s amazingly intricate web of interconnections is of paramount importance! 😀

Related Links:

ACA Brazil Nuts : Green Living Project Celebrate Earth Day with Brazil Nuts Deep Jungle: Monsters of the Forest – The Amazing Brazil Nut Tree Brazil Nuts, Rats, Bees, Orchids and Goosebumps The Agouti | Brazil Nut Tree | Eugossine | Orchid Bee Brazil nut tree – Wikipedia and of course National Geographic’s How Nature Works

I want ice water.

More from the Visual Treats volume