Guarana (Paullinia cupana) is an Amazonian climbing vine whose seeds can hold up to 5% caffeine by dry weight. Behind the world’s most potent natural stimulant lies the domestication work of the Sateré-Mawé people of Maués, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas.
Peach palm, or pupunha, is cut without felling the tree: removing the main stem triggers new shoots ready in eighteen months. It is the agroecological alternative easing pressure on the threatened juçara palm.
Piquia (Caryocar villosum) is an Amazon rainforest tree that grows up to 50 metres tall. Its yellow, oily pulp is boiled to release an oil rich in oleic acid and carotenoids, a staple for riverside communities and a new favourite of chefs in Para.
Sealed inside an almost unbreakable shell, the murumuru kernel yields a butter that is displacing palm oil in European cosmetics while funding extractivist cooperatives in Pará and Amazonas, with no tree felled.
The Amazonian rubber tree gave the world the pneumatic tyre and gave the Amazon its first great economic cycle, with opulence, forced labour and collapse. Today the same species anchors a standing forest bioeconomy.
The aromatic Amazonian fruit did not grow wild in its current form. For at least five thousand years, Indigenous peoples selected trees with thicker pulp and fewer seeds, creating a biocultural legacy that now sustains a forest bioeconomy.
In the Amazon, identifying a species by name is only the first layer. Traditional knowledge covers season, place, the part used, preparation and harvesting limits, and it requires consent before it is published.
A single mature acai palm in the floodplains of Para, northern Brazil, works as a vertical micro habitat that feeds and shelters at least 47 species of birds and bats, plus more than a hundred insect species.
Beneath the leaf litter of Pará, Brazil nut trees work as distribution centres for phosphorus and nitrogen, anchoring the mycorrhizal network that keeps neighbouring trees alive.
At least fifteen animal species in the Amazon rely on the fruit of the palm Astrocaryum aculeatum to get through the lean season. The same tucumã that sustains macaws, tapirs and agoutis defines the riverside breakfast of Para and now reaches Europe as a prized plant oil.
