Tagua Palm Nut
Tagua is an eco friendly and animal friendly substitute for ivory.
Tagua palm nut. Phytelephas is a genus containing six known species of palms family arecaceae occurring from southern panama along the andes to ecuador bolivia colombia northwestern brazil and peru. Tagua vegetable ivory trees and nuts tagua is a dried ivory like nut harvested from palm trees growing in the amazonian region of south america. See more ideas about palm trees palms and palm plants. Tagua nut is the seed of a palm known as phytelipas aequatoralis it does have a distant cousin in the solomon islandsknown as ivory nut and metroxylon amicorum from the caroline islands of micronesia as well as hyphaene ventricosa from the zambezi river of africa.
Tagua nut is the most plentiful and accessible. It is a dense seed that is dried then either cut or sometimes sanded and. Tagua is a palm tree phytelephas equatorialis endemic which grows in the hills and foothills cloud forests of the western ecuadorian andes from 300 mts to 1600 mts in altitude. All of our products are handcrafted from a palm tree nut native to the lush tropical rainforests of ecuador.
Also referred to as the ecuadorean ivory palm the tagua tree produces several bushels of seed pods a year with up to 100 tagua nuts per pod. My interest in tagua started in 1998 when i was looking for a natural alternative for bone and antler in my jewelry and carving. The tagua nut features prominently throughout all our collections.