Brazil Nut

Properties and actions: nutritive, antioxidant, emollient, wound healer, helps prevents dryness, and leaves skin soft, smooth, and hydrated.

The Brazil Nut trees grow very slowly, taking as long as 10 to 30 years before producing nuts, and only a specific species of bee can pollinate the flowers. Reason why the tree cannot be cultivated. The Brazil nut is a three-sided nut with white meat. Indigenous tribes eat the nuts raw or grate them and mix them into gruels. In the Brazilian Amazon, the nuts are grated with the thorny stilt roots of Socratea palms into a white mush known as leite de castanha and then stirred into manioc flour. This food is a valuable source of calories, fat, and protein for much of the Amazon's rural and tribal peoples.

 

Buriti - also known as Mauritia

Properties and actions: high in vitamin A its oil is extracted from the pulp and is frequently used to treat burns, because of its soothing qualities and its ability to promote the formation of scar tissue.

The buriti palm grows throughout central Brazil and the southern Amazon basin. The fruit is a yellow/reddish color, and an inflorescence can weigh up to 40kgs

One of the most used plants in the Amazon. The fruits are either eaten raw, dried and made into flour, or made into a paste which can be used to make alcoholic, and non-alcoholic drinks. They also yield palm-oil. The inflorescence and buds are consumed, while starch is extracted from the trunk. The leaves, petioles, and trunks are used in housing.

The large leaves make an excellent, heavy duty thatch. They are also used for fiber and crafts. The large petioles are used for making walls and other crafts. The trunk can be split, the spongy cortex removed, and used for fencing. this is the part that is used in our fragrance's package. The pulp is also widely used in the production of juice, jam, liqueurs and other exotic drinks with a high vitamin C content

 

Cupuaí - also known as Cupuaçu.

Properties and actions: Nutritive, stimulant, tonic

Cupuacu is a small to medium tree in the Rainforest canopy which belongs to the Chocolate family. Cupuacu fruit has been a primary food source in the Rainforest for both indigenous tribes and animals alike. The Cupuacu fruit is about the size of a cantaloupe and is highly prized for its creamy exotic tasting pulp. The pulp occupies approximately one-third of the fruit and is used throughout Brazil to make fresh juice, ice cream, jam and tarts. The fruit is considered a culinary delicacy in South America. Like chocolate, the fruit has a large center seed pod filled with "beans", which the Tikuna tribe utilize for abdominal pains.  Indigenous tribes as well as local communities along the Amazon have cultivated Cupuacu as a primary food source for generations. In remote times, Cupuacu seeds were traded along the Rio Negro and Upper Orinoco rivers where river tribes drink Cupuacu juice after it has been blessed by a shaman to facilitate difficult births.

 

Passion Fruit

Properties and actions: hydrating soothing, pain relieving properties.

A delicious fruit which is about the size of a large lemon, wrinkling slightly when ripe. Passionflower, called maracuja in the Amazon, is indigenous to many tropical and semi-  tropical areas. There are over 200 species of passionflower vines, including the Wild Passion fruit, which is purple;  Passion fruit is enjoyed by all rainforest inhabitants -humans and animals alike.  The yellow, gelatinous pulp inside the fruit is eaten out of hand, as well as mixed with water and sugar to make drinks, sherbet, jams and jellies, and even salad dressings. Indigenous tribes throughout the Amazon have long used passionflower leaves for its sedative and pain-relieving properties; the fruit is used as a heart tonic and to calm coughs.