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Lecythis ollaria
Also called Monkeypod, Ollaria Monkeypottree
Lecythis ollaria (paradise nut) is a species of tree found growing in forests in Brazil, Guyana, and Venezuela. The tree is known locally as coco de mono, and accumulates selenium in its tissues.
The nuts have a pleasant flavour and are eaten by humans. When two previously healthy women in South America developed unexplained nausea, vomiting and neurological symptoms, followed two weeks later by heavy hair loss, no cause could at first be found. It was later established that they were suffering from acute selenium toxicity brought on by eating paradise nuts. They still had elevated levels of selenium in their blood eight weeks after they had eaten the nuts. Further investigation of the tree found that the tissues of the bark, leaves, capsules and seeds all contained selenium but that the highest concentration was in the nuts which contained about five grams per kilogram, about half of which was soluble in water. The tree is considered to be a selenium accumulator and part of the element is bound to very selenium-rich proteins.
Chytroma · Lecythis ampla · Lecythis barnebyi · Lecythis brancoensis · Lecythis lanceolata · Lecythis lurida · Lecythis · Lecythis parvifructa · Lecythis poiteaui · Lecythis prancei · Lecythis retusa · Lecythis schomburgkii
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Lecythis ollaria by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
