Cashew Tree of Pirangi
Interesting facts
- Of the five main limbs, the only one that grew normally stopped when it reached the ground, and locals nicknamed it Salário Mínimo, the minimum wage.
- The park actually holds two cashew trees: a second one, planted a few years earlier, grows normally, while the giant covers about 95 percent of the area.
- Its roots are reported to reach as deep as 10 metres into the sandy soil.
- In 1955 the Brazilian magazine O Cruzeiro christened the tree O Polvo, the Octopus, when its canopy covered only about 2,000 square metres.
- A single season's crop of around 70,000 to 80,000 cashew fruits weighs roughly two and a half tonnes.
- A study published by the Piauí state tourism department in 2016 claimed that its rival tree at Cajueiro da Praia is the larger of the two.
Why it is worth it
The cashew tree of Pirangi looks less like a single tree than a small forest. It grows at Pirangi do Norte, a beach settlement in the municipality of Parnamirim, about 12 km south of Natal in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte, and its canopy covers somewhere between 7,300 and 8,500 m², roughly the space of seventy ordinary cashew trees, with a perimeter of around 500 metres.
The explanation lies in an unusual way of growing. Instead of rising upright, the branches spread sideways, sag under their own weight until they touch the sandy ground, and then put down roots, sending up new stems that grow on in their turn. Of the five main limbs that leave the original trunk, four have behaved this way, so that it is now hard to say where the first trunk ends and the later growth begins. Each season the tree carries tens of thousands of cashew fruits; Portuguese-language sources put the yield at around 70,000 to 80,000.
Local tradition holds that a fisherman named Luís Inácio de Oliveira planted it in 1888 and that he died in its shade at the age of 93. The tree entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1994 as the largest cashew tree in the world, a title now disputed by a cashew in Cajueiro da Praia in the state of Piauí, which is claimed to be slightly larger. Walkways and a raised viewing platform run through the canopy, and in 2012 a trellis was built so that branches reaching the nearby avenue could grow over the road instead of being cut back.
Getting there
The tree stands in Pirangi do Norte, about 12 km south of Natal; the town of Nísia Floresta is about 16 km away. The nearest airport is Natal's São Gonçalo do Amarante–Governador Aluízio Alves International Airport (NAT), about 35 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Cashew Tree of Pirangi, also called the world's largest cashew tree, is a cashew tree in Pirangi do Norte, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. It covers an area between 7,300 square metres and 8,400 square metres. Having the size of 70 normally sized cashew trees, its branches spread to a circumference of 500 m (1,600 ft).
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
-5.97399, -35.12902per Wikidata