Common name: Brazil nut
Scientific name: Bertholletia excelsa Humb. et Bonpl.
Family: Lecythidaceae (Lecythis family)
Plant part used: seed
Where grown: South American Tropics
Native to: South American Tropics
Use: Brazil nuts are eaten raw or roasted and salted. The nuts are also used in ice cream as well as in bakery and confectionary products.

The Brazil nut tree is a tall rain forest tree that can produce up to 300 fruits a year. Each fruit is a hard woody sphere weighing two to five pounds. Inside the hard case, 12 to 24 seeds (nuts) are arranged in a ring fitting together like the sections of an orange. After the fruits fall, rodents may gnaw through the hard fruit to get to the nuts inside. Once the fruit is open, seeds missed by the rodents can germinate and grow into a new tree.

Almost all the world’s supply is collected from wild trees. Native Brazilians rarely eat Brazil nuts!

Common name: cashew, caju, maranon
Scientific name: Anacardium occidentale
Family: Anacardiaceae (Cashew family)
Plant part used: embryo
Where grown: throughout the Tropics
Native to: Brazil to Mexico
Use: Cashew nuts are eaten salted and unsalted and added to cooked dishes.

Cashews are in the same family as mangoes and poison ivy. The “nut” is the embryo, which is borne inside a hard, oil-containing seed coat. Ninety-seven percent of the world’s cashew crop is collected by peasant farmers from naturalized trees.

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