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The celebrated botanist, Correa de Serra, told us that this tree abounds in the forests in the neighbourhood of Macapa, at the mouth of the Amazon; that it there bears the name of capucaya, and that the inhabitants gather the almonds, like those of the lecythis, to express the oil.
The fruits of the crescentia and the lecythis serve as vessels for containing food, while the spathes of the palms, and the bark of trees, furnish caps and garments without a seam.
The pericarp of the bertholletia has traces of four cells, and I have sometimes found even five. The seeds have two very distinct coverings, and this circumstance renders the structure of the fruit more complicated than in the lecythis, the pekea or caryocar, and the saouvari.
The fruit, also, is largely consumed; while the wood is excessively durable in water. Two lofty trees, closely allied to each other the Lecythis ollaria and the Bertholletia excelsa produce enormous capsules full of nuts. The first, called the sapucaya, yields these curious capsules known as cuyas de maccao, or monkeys' drinking-cups.
The formation of a large woody fruit, often in the shape of an urn, from which the top spontaneously separates in the form of a lid, is one of the characteristics of the order Lecythidaceæ, which includes the Couronpita Guianensis, or "cannon ball tree"; the gigantic Lecythis ollaria, or "monkey-pot tree," whose great woody pericarps serve as drinking vessels; and the Lecythis Zabucajo, whose fruit is known in the market as sapucaia nuts, and is greatly superior to the closely allied Brazil nuts as regards flavor and ease of digestion.
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