The fruit of a barringtonia asiatica has a brown colour and has the shape of an onion. How did the object come to the Übersee-Museum? The collection was purchased by the museum from Otto Tetens in 1907. Tetens was director of the Samoa Observatory of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen in the colony of German Samoa from 1902 to 1905. Nothing is yet known about the exact circumstances of Tetens' acquisition on site.