This Berry Below,

holds a world record,

photograph Juliano Costa/Wikimedia Commons, it is scientifically recognized as the brightest organic substance in nature, the marble berry, (Pollia condensata), is found growing wild the forests of Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania and other African countries. It has shiny blue berries – said to be hard as a rock – that are mainly seeds. Although it’s called a fruit, it can’t be eaten. In some African nations, the small metallic berries have been used for decorative purposes because their colours stay intense for many years. the plant grows in the forests of Central Africa, a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge looking for plants that bent light in interesting ways stumbled upon a marble berry at the Kew Gardens in the UK. It had been brought there from Ghana in 1974, but it still retained its impressive colouring, even the brightest-coloured plants usually rely on pigments for their appearance, and once they start to degrade at a cellular level, so does their colouring,

photograph P. Moult, the marble berry, on the other hand, remains impressively bright for decades, or even longer, that is because it doesn’t owe it’s colouring to pigments, but to a unique type of cell structure that reflects light in a unique way to create this stunning visual effect, when analysing the marble berry under a microscope, scientists found that the outer layer of the fruit consists of three to four layers of thick-walled cells, which in turn contain several layers made of cellulose fibres arranged in a spiral-like formation, when light hits the berry, some of it gets reflected and the rest reaches the others where the same effect occurs, essentially, the reflected beams of light amplify each other to produce this stunning shimmering blue, as you might expect the brightness of these berries has not gone unnoticed in the jewellery trade, 

designers Bompas & Parr collaborated with jewellery designer Maud Traon to create a one-of-a-kind silver and marble berry bracelet, the bracelet was featured in the Autumn/Winter 2014-15 collection, the one-off Pollia Condensata Slave Cuff was available on Bompas & Parr's web shop, priced at £9,800 ($16,254), the page is no longer there, but I wonder if it was ever sold? it seems a lot for a few berries!