What follows is an amazing Arbor Day story...
The show Nature: Deep Jungle on PBS discussed, among many fascinating topics, the amazing story of the Brazil nut tree.
You may enjoy eating Brazil nuts and you may be consuming them because of their health benefits, but you may not know that it is a miracle that Brazil nuts even make it into our mouths. First of all, the fruit of the Brazil nut tree, which contains up to twelve Brazil nuts, weighs up to 5 pounds and falls from the treetop (Brazil nut trees grow to be 200 feet tall) at 50 miles per hour. The fruit is incredibly hard, and it appears that it would be impossible for any animal to crack this shell, so how does this tree propogate? Also, "it wasn't clear why only (Brazil nut) trees in undisturbed forests bear fruit." This last point is very important, for this fact prevents Brazil nut harvesters from clear cutting the forest around the Brazil nut trees, lest they want to endanger this $50 million dollar a year crop.
Anyway, returning to the mystery of what animal could crack the seemingly impervious shell of the Brazil nut tree's fruit, scientists discovered that the agouti, a guinea-pig-like animal, has extremely strong jaws with razor-sharp teeth that can penetrate the shell. Without the this one animal, the Brazil nut would perish, which goes to show the delicate balance of the rain forest.
Also, the Brazil nut tree can ony produce fruit in undisturbed forests because of an amazing an unlikely interplay between bees and orchids. As intimated on the Nature site:
"Orchid bees visit flowering Brazil nut trees to collect nectar; as they buzz about feeding, the bees 
inadvertently carry pollen from tree to tree, fertilizing the flowers and helping the trees produce nuts. For the bees to survive, however, the males must attract mates, and to do that, the male bees need fragrance from a particular orchid to attract female bees. If the forest is damaged and the orchids disappear, so will the bees -- and the Brazil nuts."
This is such an amazing tale of symbiosis and goes to show that if you destroy or negatively impact one aspect of an ecosystem, you will affect some seemingly unrelated part of that ecosystem.
So, if you can, try to plant a tree on this Arbor Day, or at least take some time to enjoy these majestic beauties.
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