Photo: mauroguanandi, CC BY 2.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
Jatoba
Hymenaea courbaril
Also known as West Indian Locust, Stinking Toe, Courbaril, Guapinol, South American Locust
Key benefits
✦Traditional uses
✦Long before jatoba's rock-hard timber caught the eye of flooring companies, it was known to Amazonian and Caribbean communities as a bark to reach for when a cough settled in deep or the belly turned uneasy. Healers across its native range have traditionally simmered strips of the inner bark into a dark, slightly bitter decoction, sipped to ease chest congestion and soothe digestion. The hardened, amber-colored resin that weeps from the trunk was traditionally burned as incense and pressed onto small wounds, while the surprisingly sweet, musty pulp packed inside the tree's tough seed pods has fed forest travelers for generations, and gave the fruit its unglamorous nickname, stinking toe, for the smell it releases when a pod cracks open.
How to grow & use it
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“For the deep, steadying warmth of a forest giant, traditionally called upon when a cough won't quit or the gut needs settling.”
Jatoba's reddish-brown timber is so dense and hard that it is often sold in flooring shops as Brazilian cherry, even though it has no relation at all to true cherry trees.
The fruit pulp is a traditional wild food with no major safety concerns. Concentrated bark preparations aren't well studied, so use them sparingly and avoid in pregnancy and breastfeeding.