Tagua, also called ‘vegetable ivory', is the seed of a palm that grows in the Rainforest of Panama.  Tropical countries exported large quantities to the U.S. and Europe for buttons and jewelry, before it was displaced by plastics in the 1930's.  However; in the mid 80's, tagua became famous in the European, Japanese, and U.S. fashion industry.  The nut is approximately the size of a large prune.   Its natural color is white ivory, and it is covered with a dark brown skin.  The Wounaan and Embéra artisans who live in Darién, carve tagua with hand tools and polish it with a series of fine abrasives.  Other colors are produced by dyeing the nut with natural extracts of plants, and earth.  High quality India inks are used on those pieces with inked details.

Tagua is a very desirable substitute for elephant or hippo ivory.  Unlike elephants which must die for their precious ivory, tagua palms are a renewable resource; as long as their native habitat is preserved and sufficient seeds are left to perpetuate the palms.  A single female tagua palm may produce up to 50 pounds of nuts in a year, roughly the amount of ivory in an average African elephant tusk.  The elephant; however, yields its ivory only once on its death while the palm produces nuts year after year.

Ivory nuts have been exported from South America for more than a hundred years.  Near the turn of the century, Colombia and Ecuador were exporting nearly 40,000 tons of the precious nuts to the U.S. and Europe.   According to an article in International Wildlife (1991) by Anne Underwood, a ship sailing from South America to Germany in 1865 carried a load of tagua nuts as ballast.  Upon arriving at dockside in Hamburg, curious stevedores began playing with the taguas and noticed their ivory like characteristics.   For many years, until the arrival of synthetics, the buttons on uniforms worn by U.S. soldiers came from ivory nuts. 

One of the best places to see the beautiful South American ivory nut palm (Phytelephas aequatorialis), is the Napo River of Ecuador, a major tributary of the Amazon.  It typically grows under large rainforest trees, along streams, and on wet hillsides.  Large pinnate leaves up to 20 feet tall arise from a woody trunk that is often leaning or growing from a longer horizontal trunk above the moist ground.  Like cottonwoods, willows, marijuana and people, ivory nut palms are dioecious, with separate male and female individuals.   Female palms bear clusters of large, brown fruits, the size of grapefruits or melons; each fruit is studded with numerous woody, pointed horns and contains four or more large white endosperm.  Called "taguas" by local Indians of the Napo River, the endosperm of immature seeds is pulpy and sweet-food for people and animals of the region.   Mature, dry seeds are so hard that it requires a hacksaw to cut one in half.  Although the heavy seeds typically sink in water, some become buoyant due to internal cavities from endosperm decay.   These buoyant seeds are washed downstream by torrential rains, eventually ending up in the Atlantic Ocean where they may drift to Caribbean Islands and beaches of the southeastern U. S.

Browse our collection of Wounaan Tagua Carvings.