Nuts About The Rainforest, The Brazil Nut (Bertholletia excelsa Bonpl.) its role in the ecology, ethnobotany, and economy of Amazonian Brazil with an emphasis on the indigenous peoples. By Pedro B.L. Lisboa and Ghillean T. Prance. Published by Redfern Natural History Productions Ltd. 2026. 484pp with dustjacket.
A huge amount of time, energy and decades of exploration in the Amazon rainforest has gone into this magnificent work, compiled by two authors. The first is Pedro Lisboa who was Director at the Goeldi Museum in Belem, and Professor Sir Iain Prance who was Director of the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew 1988-1999. Both love trees; particularly this one. Between them they have published 43 books and about 700 scientific papers. For a while, Sir Iain seemed to be forever in Amazonia since he clocked up 39 expeditions and collected over 350 new species of plant; a rare and superlative record for field botany in the thick of it. He has 15 honorary doctorates.
But this tome is almost as heavy as the fruit of the tree that they have compiled, the Brazil Nut. So why this species? The answer is because it is simply the ‘greatest symbol of sustainability and conservation in the Amazon Basin’. It certainly is distinctive and magnificent, an ‘eye-stopper’, towering over other vegetation, growing on a straight trunk and flowering amongst the canopy, 20-30 metres up. This is a killer nut, the size of a child’s head, that has claimed several lives and fractured skulls.
The nut is made of hard wood, and its evolutionary origin is fascinating, perhaps being so hard to avoid the ravaging skills of the megapods before man evolved, or simply to deter large herbivores, or both: a consequence of evolution. The nut has a lid which detatches to allow the fruits to tumble out, and the whole fruit is a pyxidium, a device also shared by the delicate and humble Scarlet Pimpernel.
Cracking the nut in the wild has been achieved in a symbiotic relationship with the agouti – the main disperser – which helps to spread the species. This rodent has such strong teeth it can gnaw its way to the softer centre of the nut. This is coevolution at it is best. The nut it nutritious for indigenous peoples and explorers alike, for instance saving Humboldt men from starvation when they came up the Orinoco into Amazonia.
Pollination of the flowers is done by strong-bodied bees of five genera, able to fly up to 20km, thus increasing gene flow and ensuring good genetic variability. Germination takes a while; when Kew tried germinating the whole capsule it took up to six years to get a few seeds to germinate out of the pericarp. In the wild the hard nuts can lie around in the leaf litter for a few years before germination.
Knowledge of the Bazil nut came late to Europeans; the first mention being Carolus Clusius (1526-1609) who established it in Leiden, Netherlands. But this book digs very deep into its origins of the Brazil nut in the ordinary lives of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon. There are 331 indigenous lands in the ‘Legal Amazonia’, of an increasing population (730K in 2022), and most collect Brazil nut as part of their diet, usage (i.e. matting) and for sale. The authors describe the nut productivity of indigenous peoples along all the main river basins. There is no other book that has meticulously catalogued the profit and loss accounts, and vagaries of the world trade in these nuts. The book thus presents historical, ecological, anthropomphic information and commercial data on the species. It is no wonder that Robin Hanbury-Tenison, Founder of Survival International, has endorsed the book.
The nut crop is so important that models have been worked up to show that of the indigenous people could produce 34,608 tons of Brazil nuts a year, as an reliable economic gain. This has been worked out as a means of proving that this reliance of one single food source may restrain the progressive loss of the rainforest by preserving and conserving rainforest. After the nut have been taken from the wooden capsule a modern usage of the capsules has been to make organic bioplastics.
Harvesting of nuts is done from existing rainforest trees, so the harvest is entirely sustainable. We learn than there are no plantations in the Amazon, that there are great swathes without the species, and that its origin is a little obscure, there are conundrums and enigmas and false declarations and there is a lack of fossils which is an evolutionary botanical mystery.
These two botanists have ‘cracked’ the story of Brazil nuts…..yes, they have become nuts about the nuts on this botanical literary expedition. There is nothing quite like this botanical masterpiece on such a key rainforest species. The book has many colour photographs, and there is a General Index, Index of Scientific Names, Index of Indigenous tribes cited, and a Glossary.
Every botanical and ethnobotanical library in the world should have a copy.