The Brazil nut is a South American tree in the family Lecythidaceae, and it is also the name of the tree's commercially harvested edible seeds. It is one of the largest and longest-lived trees in the Amazon rainforest. The fruit and its nutshell – containing the edible Brazil nut – are relatively large, possibly weighing as much as 2 kg (4.4 lb) in total weight. As food, Brazil nuts are notable for diverse content of micronutrients, especially a high amount of selenium. The wood of the Brazil nut tree is prized for its quality in carpentry, flooring, and heavy construction.
Pachira aquatica is a tropical wetland tree in the mallow family Malvaceae, native to Central and South America where it grows in swamps. It is known by its common names Malabar chestnut, French peanut, Guiana chestnut, Provision tree, Saba nut, Monguba (Brazil), Pumpo (Guatemala) and is commercially sold under the names Money tree and Money plant. This tree is sometimes sold with a braided trunk and is commonly grown as a houseplant, although more commonly what is sold as a "Pachira aquatica" houseplant is in fact a similar species, P. glabra.
The greater spear-nosed bat is a bat species of the family Phyllostomidae from South and Central America. It is one of the larger bats of this region and is omnivorous.
Couratari is a genus of trees in the family Lecythidaceae, first described as a genus in 1775. They are native to tropical South America and Central America.
Lecythis pisonis, the cream nut or monkey pot, is a tropical tree in the Brazil nut family Lecythidaceae. It is known in its native tropical America as sapucaia or castanha-de-sapucaia. The fruit is shaped like a cooking pot and contains edible seeds.
Lecythis is a genus of woody plant in the Lecythidaceae family first described as a genus in 1758. It is native to Central America and South America. Several species produce edible seeds and referred to by a variety of common names including paradise nut, monkey pot, cream nut, and sapucaia nut.
Simarouba amara is a species of tree in the family Simaroubaceae, found in the rainforests and savannahs of South and Central America and the Caribbean. It was first described by Aubl. in French Guiana in 1775 and is one of six species of Simarouba. The tree is evergreen, but produces a new set of leaves once a year. It requires relatively high levels of light to grow and grows rapidly in these conditions, but lives for a relatively short time. In Panama, it flowers during the dry season in February and March, whereas in Costa Rica, where there is no dry season it flowers later, between March and July. As the species is dioecious, the trees are either male or female and only produce male or female flowers. The small yellow flowers are thought to be pollinated by insects, the resulting fruits are dispersed by animals including monkeys, birds and fruit-eating bats and the seeds are also dispersed by leaf cutter ants.
Petenaea cordata was first described in Elaeocarpaceae and later placed in Tiliaceae, but most authors have been uncertain about its familial affinities. It was considered a taxon incertae sedis in the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification. Molecular analyses based on a recent collection from Guatemala indicate a distant, weakly supported sister-group relationship to the African genus Gerrardina. As no obvious synapomorphies exist for Gerrardina and Petenaea, the new monogeneric family Petenaeaceae was proposed. The polymorphic order Huerteales now comprises four small families: Dipentodontaceae, Gerrardinaceae, Petenaeaceae and Tapisciaceae. Petenaea cordata is the only species in the genus Petenaea.
Pentaclethra macroloba is a large and common leguminous tree in the genus Pentaclethra native to the wet tropical areas of the northern Neotropics, which can form monocultural stands in some seasonally flooded habitats. It has giant, bipinnate leaves shaped like feathers. It uses seed dispersal by water to establish itself in new areas, having floating seeds that are left behind after the waters recede after floods or tides. It has hard timber which is not very resistant to rot in the tropics, but it can be treated, has a pretty pink-red colour when dry, and has a number of uses. Oil used in cosmetics is extracted from the large seeds. In the northern Amazon region the bark is used in herbal medicine as an antivenom, and in the Guianas the bark has been used as a fish poison. Despite their toxicity, the seeds are eaten by variegated squirrels, parrots and macaws, and serve as the nurseries of the larvae of the moth Carmenta surinamensis.
Hypodaphnis is a monotypic genus of flowering plants of the family Lauraceae. Its only extant species, Hypodaphnis zenkeri, is native to Gabon. Although only one living species is known, fossils of some species of this genus are present in North America, especially in Northern Mexico. In most phylogenetic analysis, Hypodaphnis appears as the basal branch, the sister group of the rest of the family Lauraceae.
Lecythis ampla is a species of woody plant in the family Lecythidaceae, which also includes the Brazil nut. Common names include coco, olla de mono, jicaro and salero. It is found in Central and South America. It has been considered an endangered species in Costa Rica.
Dorstenia foetida, also known as grendelion, is a succulent plant in the genus Dorstenia, which is native to Eastern Africa and Arabia. It is a very variable species with a wide distribution.
Hymenodictyon parvifolium Oliv. is a small rubiaceous African tree and is one of some 24 species in the genus, with a tropical African and Asian distribution. This species grows as a small tree to some 5 metres tall, or sometimes a liane or scrambler to 10.5 m, and is found in low-altitude woodland.
Parkia filicoidea, or African locust bean, is a large, spreading flat-crowned tree to 30 metres tall, the bole of which may be narrowly buttressed to a height of about 3 metres, and up to 120 cm DBH. It occurs in wet evergreen or semi-deciduous forest, sometimes on forest fringes, riverbanks and lakes, termite mounds, at elevations up to 1000 metres from Côte d’Ivoire, east to Sudan and Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and south to Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Bark on trunk scaly or smooth, grey to yellow-brown, branchlets glabrous to puberulous.
Acacia resinimarginea, also known as old-man wodjil, is a tree or shrub belonging to the genus Acacia and the subgenus Juliflorae that is endemic to western Australia.
Acacia saxatilis is a shrub of the genus Acacia and the subgenus Phyllodineae that is endemic to south western Australia
Lecythis minor, the monkey-pot tree, is a small tree with toxic seeds that occurs in South America.
Lancetilla Botanical Garden is a botanical garden and significant tourist attraction located on the coast of the Caribbean Sea, in the north of the Republic of Honduras, about 7 km southeast of the city of Tela.
Lecythis poiteaui (Lecythidaceae) of the Guianas and eastern Brazil, commonly called Jarana Amarela, is a rainforest tree of non-flooding forests, reaching canopy-height. The leaves are deciduous, elliptic, to 10.5 inches long by up to four inches wide, with crenulate edges. Inflorescences unbranched racemes up to 12 inches (30 cm) in length, usually at the tip of branches with 2 to 7 widely spaced, oddly shaped creme de minthe or white flowers, having around 1,000 stamens each. Fruit globose 1.25 inches by one inch (2.5 cm) with 4 to 6 brown, aril-covered seeds in each.
Myristica beddomei is a species of tree in the family Myristicaceae. It is endemic to the Western Ghats, India, where it is frequent in the mid-elevation wet evergreen forests and an important food tree of hornbills. The species has been earlier misidentified in regional floras and herbarium specimens as Myristica dactyloides Gaertn., the latter occurring only in Sri Lanka.
