A501 Tagua Nut Necklace & Coordinating Pierced Earrings

This necklace features Ecuadorian Tagua nuts painted with yellow hibiscus flowers 🌼 and strung on black hand-knotted satin ribbon. The coordinating French wire earrings are lightweight lacquered wood. The necklace has a 17" drop and the earrings are 3.5" long. Each Tagua nut is about 3/4" long. Ivory or Tagua palms grow from Panama along the Andes to Ecuador, Bolivia & Colombia. The scientific name Phytelephas means "plant elephant". This name refers to the very hard white endosperm of their seeds (tagua nuts or jarina seeds) which resemble elephant ivory. Given trade restrictions in elephant ivory as well as animal welfare concerns, ivory endosperm is often used as a substitute for elephant ivory today, and traded under the names vegetable ivory, palm ivory, marfil-vegetal, corozo, tagua, or jarina. When dried out, it can be carved just like elephant ivory and can be dyed and used for beads, buttons, figurines and jewelry. Vegetable ivory stimulates local economies in South America, provides an alternative to cutting down rainforests for farming and prevents elephants from being killed their tusks. The kernels are picked from the ground after the fruit has fallen from the tree and forest animals have eaten the pericarp, or harvested when ripe and the pericarp manually removed. As the nut shrinks when it hardens, a small hollow cavity can form in the center. In their native range, these palms are also used as a source of food and construction wood.