Do Brazil nuts come from Brazil? They do, but there are several other countries that produce them as well. Depending on the year, Bolivia is often a larger producer of Brazil nuts than Brazil is.
Before we talk about why Brazil nuts are called Brazil nuts, we need to acknowledge the fact that they are not actually nuts. All of the things that we think are nuts are actually a mix of nuts, seeds, legumes, or drupes. A nut is a pod with a shell that becomes hard and houses the fruit and the seed of a plant. The fruit does not open to release the seeds.” Hazelnuts, chestnuts, and acorns are true nuts. A seed is the reproductive part of a flowering plant that is able to grow into another plant. Seeds are released from the fruit. Brazil nuts and macadamia nuts are seeds, not nuts. A legume is an edible seed enclosed in a pod. Peas are legumes, but so are peanuts. We discard the pod and eat the legume in both cases. A drupe is an outer fleshy part that surrounds a shell with a seed inside. A peach is a drupe, but so are walnuts and almonds. So, Brazil nuts are actually Brazil seeds. Good. We’ve got that out of the way.
So, where do Brazil nuts come from? They grow in a large area throughout the Amazon Basin. They can grow as far north as southern Venezuela and as far south as northern Bolivia. This is an enormous area that is 8 times larger than California. The trees are very tall and can reach over 50 m in height. The trees need a constant high temperature, high humidity, well drained soil, lots of rain, and shade from the sun, all of which they can find in the rainforest conditions of the Amazon Basin. People have tried to grow Brazil nuts in other countries, but they have never taken because of their specific environmental requirements. The only country outside of South America where they are grown is the Ivory Coast. There are two more reasons why they don’t grow well outside of South America. They are pollinated by a bee called the orchid bee. It is not easy to get inside the flower of the Brazil nut tree and only large bees can do it. The orchid bee is large enough. The second reason is the seed dispersal system. Brazil nuts grow inside a round pod that is about the size of a bowling ball. They are kept in place by a pith, like the segments in an orange. When the seed pod is ripe, it falls off the tree and the pith becomes separated, leaving the seeds lose. The tree depends on a number of rodents with sharp teeth to get into the seed pod and take the seeds off to be buried. The pod is so hard that only animals with strong jaws and sharp teeth can get at them. A rodent called the agouti has chisel-like teeth and it can crack the pods. Animals in other countries wouldn’t have evolved to do this.
So, if Brazil nuts come from a huge area that is only partially in Brazil, and as Bolivia is generally the largest producer of Brazil nuts, why are they called Brazil nuts? In Brazil, they are called “castanhas-do-Para”, which means “chestnuts from Para”, which is a state in Northern Brazil where a lot of Brazil nuts grow. Indigenous people have eaten them for thousands of years. The name Brazil nuts was given to them by Europeans who first discovered them in 1569. A Spanish conquistador was marching through the forest with his troops when they found Brazil nuts. They ate lots of them to survive. They were actually where Venezuela is today, but that country didn’t exist at the time. Shortly after this, in the early 1600s, Dutch explorers took some of the nuts back to Holland and a trade sprang up. Brazil was being settled by the Portuguese at the time and all of the Brazil nut trees that had been found where inside the area that the Portuguese were calling Brazil and the name stuck. The official name for the Brazil nut is Bertholletia excelsa. It was named by Alexander von Humboldt in honor of his friend. Interestingly, Brazil was not originally called Brazil by the Portuguese. They called it Santa Cruz in 1500. That name didn’t last long and the land became known as “terra de brasil”. Brasil was the name of a red wood tree found in the area. If it hadn’t been for that, we would be eating Santa Cruz nuts. And this is what I learned today.
Image By Quadell – Self-published work by Quadell, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67307
Sources
https://wholesalenutsanddriedfruit.com/history-of-brazil-nut-production
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_nut
https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-differences-between-nuts-and-drupes
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/difference-between-nut-and-seed
https://www.quora.com/How-is-it-that-Brazil-nuts-cannot-be-cultivated-that-they-can-only-grow-wild
https://www.etymonline.com/word/Brazil
https://modernfarmer.com/2016/08/brazil-nuts