276 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



SAPUCAJAS (Lecythis Zabucajo). 



IN the fruit-shops are often seen baskets of nuts, about 

 two inches in length, three quarters of an inch wide in 

 the middle, slightly curved, irregularly grooved, pale 

 brown, and bluntly pointed. These are Sapucajas. The 

 shell is brittle, and easily broken, allowing of easy 

 extraction of the pale-brown kernel, the flavour of which 

 is mild, mellow, somewhat creamy, very pleasant, and by 

 many persons considered superior to that of the juvia. 

 The sapucaja is believed also to be more digestible ; it is 

 certainly a much worthier fruit for the table. 



The tree producing the sapucaja is, like the Bertho- 

 lettia, one of the forest-ornaments of tropical South 

 America, growing especially in Venezuela, Guiana, and 

 Brazil. The trunk attains the height of eighty to ninety 

 feet, and is covered with hard rough bark, like that of 

 the oak; the flowers and the huge and glossy leaves in 

 figure resemble those of the Bertholettia ; the seed-pod 

 (for sapucajas, like juvias, are not "nuts," but only 

 seeds) is an extraordinary kind of urn, a foot in depth, 

 and in the middle six or seven inches in diameter the 

 substance so hard as to be beyond the power of any 

 hammer to affect, When ripe, it opens naturally by 

 cracking all round near the summit, so that the upper 

 fourth or fifth portion of the urn drops off like a lid, and 

 the seeds, the sapucajas, tumble out. The idea is deli- 

 cately anticipated in the seed-pods of several of our little 



