Theobroma grandiflorum Seeds | Cupuassu
LATIN NAME: Theobroma grandiflorum
COMMON NAME: Cupuassu
Plant Profile
Cupuassu is a Amazonian tree of the cacao family, grown for fruit the size of a football that hangs from the trunk and the thicker branches. It reaches six to fifteen metres in the forest understory, with a straight trunk, large, drooping leaves and a crown that stays narrow in shade and broadens in the open. The fruit is a hard, brown, woody capsule that splits along its seams when ripe, revealing white pulp around two or three dozen large seeds. The pulp is the prize: thick, creamy, sharply aromatic, somewhere between pineapple and chocolate. It is eaten fresh, made into juice and ice cream, and used to flavour a liqueur. The seeds are fermented and dried like cocoa, and their fat, cupuassu butter, is used in cosmetics.
Science & Biotechnology
Theobroma grandiflorum is one of twenty-odd species in a genus that also holds cacao, and it differs from its famous relative in having a much larger fruit, a thicker pulp and seeds that are lower in fat and higher in pectin. Genomic work on the genus has looked at the genes behind pod size and pulp chemistry, and at the loss of bitterness in cacao by comparison with the sharper, more acidic cupuassu. The pulp is rich in volatile esters and in vitamin C, and its aroma has been characterised in detail because it survives freezing and is used industrially. Agronomically the species is more demanding than cacao: it needs deep, humid shade when young and constant moisture, and it suffers in full sun. Its seed is recalcitrant and must be sown within days of extraction.
Uses & Benefits
The pulp is the reason the tree is planted. It is sold frozen in Brazil, made into juice, ice cream, mousse and a thick, sour-sweet liqueur, and it is one of the defining flavours of the Pará region. The seeds are processed into cupuassu butter, a softer fat than cocoa butter with a higher melting point, used in lipsticks and skin creams, and into a bitter, coarse chocolate that is now sold as a specialty. In agroforestry the tree is grown under taller canopy, where it produces well and improves the soil with leaf litter. It is not a crop for a small garden outside the tropics, but it makes a handsome conservatory specimen where there is heat and humidity to spare.
Growing from Seed
Sow within a week of opening the fruit, because the seed dies once it dries. Clean off the pulp, sow flat in a deep pot of rich, free-draining compost, and keep at twenty-five to thirty degrees with high humidity. Germination takes two to four weeks. The seedling needs shade for its first two years and a deep pot, since the taproot grows fast. Grow on in filtered light with steady moisture and a mulch of leaf litter. Plant out under established shade where frost is impossible, spacing at least six metres apart. Feed with compost twice a year and keep the ground covered. Fruit begins in the fourth or fifth year.
Our Take
A jungle tree with fruit the size of a football and pulp that tastes of nothing else. Heat, humidity and shade, or nothing.
Related Reading
More species in the same orbit as Cupuassu: