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They may be luxury commodities now, but civet coffee, eiderdown, sea silk, vicuña, vegetable ivory, guano and edible bird nests all started as local harvests.

So hard in fact that they are also known as "vegetable ivory".

If jewelry is what you are after, don’t miss Tagua 950, a tiny shop with a nice collection of bracelets, necklaces and earrings made from tagua nut, a rain forest seed known as vegetable ivory.

The forests yield cinchona bark, caoutchouc, sarsaparilla, and vegetable ivory.

He was bald—completely bald—his head looked like vegetable ivory, and in despair he consulted a Saville-row physician.