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A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A BRAZIL NUT TREE_TITLE.png

LIFE... THROUGH THE EYES OF A TREE

A HARD NUT TO CRACK

Have you ever considered where Brazil Nuts come from? Yes, they hail from South American countries like Brazil, but the nuts aren’t harvested on a plantation or cultivated in a nursery. For it to reproduce, a Brazil Nut tree relies on a series of intricate symbiotic relationships with plants, animals and insects found only in the wild. This means that the Brazil Nut tree only grows in its natural habitat… the Amazon rainforest. It’s here, in the heart of the Amazon that we find one of these incredible trees… a 500-year-old Titan, nearly 50 meters tall.

The tree’s ripe fruit, also known as a Coco, is incredibly hard, and there’s only one animal in the Amazon that can crack it open… the Agouti. This large rodent is able to hear a Brazil Nut pod fall from far away and its contents is the Agouti’s favorite food. Each Coco has a tiny hole at its base, and it’s at this spot where the large rodent gnaws open the pod with its incredibly powerful teeth. The capsule holds up to 24 delicious seeds, much more than the Agouti can eat in one go, so it buries the extra seeds throughout the Amazon. It’s the tree’s primary seed disperser. The Agouti doesn’t always recover all the seeds, and some germinate where they are buried, to become the next generation of Brazil Nut saplings.

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The fallen Brazil Nut Pods are collected each year for the global Brazil Nut export industry. The Nut collectors, also known as Castañeros, leave behind piles of emptied Coco shells on the jungle floor, but even these don’t go to waste. As the empty shells fill up with rain water, frogs, like the Three-banded Poison arrow frog, use them to raise their tadpoles. Others, like the extremely venomous Coral Snake, also use the discarded pods for shelter.

During flower season, large-bodied bees are the only insects strong enough to lift of flower’s coiled hood to get to the sweet nectar inside. They are the tree’s only pollinators.

The mighty Titan is an important ecosystem for an array of plants, animals, birds and insects living in the Amazon rainforest. Without it, many species will go extinct. Because of deforestation, the number of Brazil Nut trees in the Amazon has declined drastically. As its habitat becomes smaller, the trees’ allies also disappear. Without animals like the Agouti and Orchid Bees, the trees will die out. The Brazil Nut industry is a booming economy in South America that provides a sustainable source of income for many forest-based communities. But for it to continue being a success, local communities have to maintain and protect this incredible tree.

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