Consequently, Brazil nut fruits fall mainly in January and February, during the rainy season. Under natural conditions, seeds take 12 to 18 months to germinate (Müller, 1988). He devotes a lot to the development of a Brazil nut. Brazil walnut trees bloom during the dry season (basically in autumn).
After the flowers are pollinated, the tree bears fruit and takes a full 15 months to develop. In South America, the Brazil nut harvest begins in November and lasts throughout the winter until March. In Africa, cashew nuts are harvested at two different times of the year. In West Africa, the harvest begins in December and lasts until June, while in East Africa the cashew harvest period is limited to the months of October and November.
Cashew nuts from Vietnam are harvested between February and March. In this way, it is possible to meet demand throughout the year. Something extraordinary happened along the way. Brazil nuts hooked up with that other Amazonian wonder, rubber, in a symbiotic relationship.
The huge demand for rubber that began in the mid-19th century led to waves of settlers from the coast to the forest, where they hit the viscous white latex from May to November. Many collected raw rubber in Brazil nut shells. In the rainy winter, the chestnut harvest allowed them to work in the forest from December to March. When the rubber market soared, Brazil nut sales continued.
From 1847 to 1897, rubber exports grew by more than 2000 percent. But in the 1870s, settlers in Southeast Asia discovered that they could grow Brazilian rubber trees free of the parasites that prevailed in South America. From 1910 onwards, Brazilians saw rubber prices fall. Those who were stranded in the forest with no secure income turned to Brazil nuts.
Today's chestnut trees live as they did a hundred years ago. They make huts in the woods and wait for the nuts to fall. Most of the harvesting is done in the morning, when the wind is still and there is less chance of being hit by a falling capsule. On a fine day, an experienced collector can find more than a thousand pods, cut them with a machete and transport the nuts, in bags of up to 140 pounds, to the river or the nearest road.
It was they who named the Brazilian walnut tree Bertholletia excelsa, in honor of Humboldt's friend, chemist and salon presenter Claude Louis Berthollet. Alone among the foods of the world economy, these nuts come almost exclusively from remote natural forests, rather than from more convenient plantations. The harvest of Chandler nuts in the northern hemisphere is usually carried out in October, while in the south (Chile) it is done in April. Hazelnuts, or more specifically Filberts, are grown mainly in Mediterranean climates, although warmer climates in other countries also produce them, including the United States and China.
Only certain native bees can get into flowers and cross-pollinate to produce nuts, and these bees are virtually impossible to domesticate. They believe they can show that, aside the danger of serious or fatal injury, chestnut trees can make a living picking nuts from a living forest year after year than with any single-shot wood harvest. Like many walnuts, almonds grow on small trees, about a foot wide at the trunk and up to about 12 feet. Brazil nuts contain about 14 percent protein, 11 percent carbohydrates, and 67 percent fat or oil, as well as potassium, phosphorus, calcium, and vitamin B.
Harvesting is done by shaking the trees (manually or mechanically) to loosen and drop ripe nuts from the tree. Peanuts are harvested in the southern hemisphere from April to June and in the north between September and October. Ortiz and Forsyth know that it's not just biology that will make the chestnut and tree business healthier for chestnut growers and trees. By the second half of the 19th century, England's Christmas celebration had snowballed into a lavish event, and the holiday brought bowls full of raw, bitter-tasting nuts to homes across the country.
Too late and they will lose the harvest because of agoutis, brown cat-sized rodents that pick up all the Brazil nut pods they can find and then bury the nuts individually, just as squirrels bury acorns for future food. The cashew nut itself is actually a secondary fruit, which grows at the end of what is the flower, or cashew apple, which is also edible. . .