''Hymenaea courbaril'', the courbaril or West Indian locust, is a

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

common in the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean ...

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

, and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

. It is a

hardwood Hardwood is wood from dicot trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen. Hardwood (which comes from ...

that is used for

furniture Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating ( tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks) ...

flooring Flooring is the general term for a permanent covering of a floor, or for the work of installing such a floor covering. Floor covering is a term to generically describe any finish material applied over a floor structure to provide a walking surface ...

, and decoration. Its hard fruit pods have edible dry pulp surrounding the seeds. Its sap, called animé, is used for

incense Incense is aromatic biotic material that releases fragrant smoke when burnt. The term is used for either the material or the aroma. Incense is used for aesthetic reasons, religious worship, aromatherapy, meditation, and ceremony. It may also b ...

perfume Perfume (, ; french: parfum) is a mixture of fragrant essential oils or aroma compounds (fragrances), fixatives and solvents, usually in liquid form, used to give the human body, animals, food, objects, and living-spaces an agreeable scent ...

, and

varnish Varnish is a clear transparent hard protective coating or film. It is not a stain. It usually has a yellowish shade from the manufacturing process and materials used, but it may also be pigmented as desired, and is sold commercially in variou ...

Names

''Hymenaea courbaril'' is commonly known as the "courbaril", "West Indian locust", "Brazilian copal", and "amami-gum", and "Jatobá

Although it is sometimes denominated "Brazilian cherry" and "South American cherry", it is not a cherry, cherry tree but a legume of the family

Fabaceae The Fabaceae or Leguminosae,International Code of Nomenc ...

. It is also known as "stinking toe", "old man's toe", and "stinktoe" because of the unpleasant

odor An odor (American English) or odour (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences) is caused by one or more volatilized chemical compounds that are generally found in low concentrations that humans and animals can perceive via their sense ...

of the edible pulp of its

seed pod This page provides a glossary of plant morphology. Botanists and other biologists who study plant morphology use a number of different terms to classify and identify plant organs and parts that can be observed using no more than a handheld magnify ...

Fruit

Its fruit, also known as locust, was a major food for indigenous peoples. Those who eat it do not consider the odor unpleasant. The pulp, in spite of its somewhat disagreeable odor, has a sweet taste; is consumed raw; may be dried and transformed into powder to be incorporated into cookies, crackers, and soups; and may be mixed with water to prepare a drink called "atole". The pulp inside the hard shells appears like miniature soluble fibers that dissolve easily in water or milk, which it thickens. Some add sugar to it for more sweetness. If consumed raw it tends to stick inside the mouth like dry dust. It is one of the richest vegetable foods known because of its high concentrations of starches and proteins. It is further an excellent concentrated feed for animals.

Animé

The tree produces an orange, soft, sticky

resin In polymer chemistry and materials science, resin is a solid or highly viscous substance of plant or synthetic origin that is typically convertible into polymers. Resins are usually mixtures of organic compounds. This article focuses on nat ...

or gum, denominated "animé" (

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

for "animated", in reference to its insect-infested natural state). The resin has a specific gravity varying from 1.054 to 1.057. It melts readily over fire, and softens even with the heat of the mouth. It diffuses white fumes and a very pleasant

. Insects are generally entrapped in it in large numbers. It is insoluble in water, and nearly so in cold alcohol. It is similar to

copal Copal is tree resin, particularly the aromatic resins from the copal tree ''Protium copal'' (Burseraceae) used by the cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica as ceremonially burned incense and for other purposes. More generally, copal includes re ...

in its nature and appearance, and a copal from

Zanzibar Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islan ...

is sometimes given this name. The production of animé may be encouraged by wounding the bark. The resin collects between the principal roots. It can be obtained from other species of ''

Hymenaea ''Hymenaea'' is a genus of plants in the legume family Fabaceae. Of the fourteen living species in the genus, all but one are native to the tropics of the Americas, with one additional species ('' Hymenaea verrucosa'') on the east coast of Af ...

'' growing in tropical

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ians use it internally to treat diseases of the lungs. It was formerly an ingredient of ointments and plasters, but at present its only use is for

and

Wood

The

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...

is very hard, measuring 5.6 on the

Brinell scale The Brinell scale characterizes the indentation hardness of materials through the scale of penetration of an indenter, loaded on a material test-piece. It is one of several definitions of hardness in materials science. History Proposed by S ...

and on the Janka scale, approximate measurements of hardness. For comparison,

Douglas fir The Douglas fir (''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') is an evergreen conifer species in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is native to western North America and is also known as Douglas-fir, Douglas spruce, Oregon pine, and Columbian pine. There are three v ...

measures ,

white oak The genus ''Quercus'' contains about 500 species, some of which are listed here. The genus, as is the case with many large genera, is divided into subgenera and sections. Traditionally, the genus ''Quercus'' was divided into the two subgenera ''C ...

, and

Brazilian walnut ''Ocotea porosa'', commonly called imbuia or Brazilian walnut, is a species of plant in the Lauraceae family. Its wood is very hard, and it is a major commercial timber species in Brazil. Taxonomy and naming It is often placed in the related g ...

on the Janka scale. It features a tan to salmon color with black accent stripes that over time turn to a deep and vibrant red. File:Hymenaea courbaril Taub77a.png, Illustration from ''Natürliche Pflanzenfamilien'', Volume 3, 3 (1891). File:Jatobazaograndao.jpg,

Notes

References

* Attribution: *

External links

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q2234016 courbaril Trees of Central America Trees of South America Trees of Peru Trees of the Caribbean Trees of the Dominican Republic Flora of the Dominican Republic Hardwood forest plants Trees of Îles des Saintes Plants described in 1753 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus Flora without expected TNC conservation status