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Brazil Nuts, formerly known as cream nuts and Para nuts, are the large extremely hard-shelled seeds of the Brazil Nut tree. The Brazil tree is a beautiful giant evergreen indigenous to the Amazon forests of South America. The tree itself is a very long and straight trunk that only will branch in the uppermost part. Brazil nut trees can exceed heights of one hundred fifty feet with a trunk diameter of up to eight feet. The crown of the tree spreads out to a breadth of one hundred feet or more towering over other tropical vegetation. The tree produces large, glossy, deeply ribbed green leaves that can be as long as fifteen inches and as wide as six inches. The end of the branches, produce large pale yellow flowers. The tree produces large spherical fruits that resemble coconuts. They take about fourteen months to mature and are four to six inches in diameter and weigh about four pounds each.
Inside the fragile outer shell of the fruit is a tough and fibrous inner shell about one quarter of an inch thick, which contains about twelve to twenty-four brazil nuts closely packed together. When the large fruits ripen they fall to the ground. Falling from a height of one hundred fifty feet makes for dangerous collection. Especially on windy and rainy days. One must be careful to make sure no fruits come crashing on their head.
Almost all Brazil nuts come from wild trees scattered throughout the Amazon Basin in a huge area over a million and a quarter square miles. They cover about forty percent of Brazil as well as parts of five other neighboring countries. The trees grow best in deep well drained, alluvial soils on high ground not subject to flooding. They frequently grow in groups of six or more. While most of the Brazil nut production comes from Brazil there is production in Bolivia, Peru, Columbia, the Guianas, and Venezuela.
A mature tree can produce between two hundred and fifty to five hundred pounds of unshelled nuts a year. A good crop yield in one year usually means a lesser crop the following year. Nuts are harvested from an estimated 250,000 to 400,000 trees yearly. However, there are hundreds of thousands of out of sight trees from which nuts are never collected. Consequently, every year thousands of tons of Brazil nuts are not harvested by man, but just fall to the floor of the jungle to be consumed by monkeys or other animals. There have been efforts to establish Brazil nut plantations, but the results have been unsuccessful at best.