Rare bean found on UK beach was carried 5,000 miles by oceans and rivers from Amazon Rain Forest

The sea heart  probably fell from a rain forest monkey ladder vine into a branch of the Amazon River.

It would have been swept into the Atlantic and taken over a year, aided by storms and wind, to wash up at Lulworth Cove, Dorset. Countryside ranger Jim Gale, 31, who found it, said: “It was very  difficult to spot as this is a stony beach.

“It looked like a squashed conker and had a hard outer casing. I’ve no doubt it came from South America. It probably began its journey hundreds, if not thousands, of miles inland.”

The heart-shaped beans grow in pods of up to 15 and their   hard shells help them float far out to sea. They are inedible and are usually turned into trinkets and lockets.

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