Coco palm

“ The coco palm differs so greatly from any of the trees of our temperate zone that its habit of growth and its manner of flowering and fruiting are of considerable interest. It is always produced from seed. For this purpose the mature coconuts are set out to sprout in beds on the ground, ordinarily under partial shade. The East Indian hangs them in baskets or ties them to poles or to the limbs of a tree. They are never embedded entirely in the soil till ready to plant, which is in about a year, when the roots have penetrated the husk and the first leaves have appeared. ”

“ Large coco palm plantations often twenty to 100,000 acres in extent, are being established in various parts of the world to keep pace with the demand which is increasing with the decline in the supply of animal fats. The coconut supply to the United States has hitherto come chiefly from the American tropics, Central America, Colombia, Brazil, and the West Indies. The trees in this region are lately threatened by a fungus disease, the so-called "bud-rot," which has gained a foot-hold. ”

“ Coco-palms.It is here too that the coco-palm most flourishes, a tree that supplies not only their food and drink, but also every material necessary for the construction of huts and the manufacture of the various articles which they use. While the greatest care is necessary to make those growing further inland bear even a little fruit, the palm-trees close to the shore, even when planted on wretched soil, grow plentiful crops without the slightest trouble. Has a palm-tree ever been made to blossom in a hothouse? ”

“ Eventually there remains on the flowering spike only the female flowers, each of the size of a horse-chestnut and from the very first roughly indicative of the shape of the fruit. While the male flowers are rather perfect with free floral leaves, six stamens and a rudimentary three-parted pistil, the female coco palm flower seems to have suppressed all frills to devote itself from the beginning exclusively to the production of coconuts. The male flowers are insect-visited, but the palm is apparently wind-pollinated. Within a short time the young coconuts look much like huge, green acorns. ”

“ During the early years of its life the coco palm does not differ greatly in general appearance from several of our small hot-house palms. Leaves of moderate size arise from near the ground and for some time there is scarcely any visible promise of the future lofty trunk. The first leaves are entire as they appear, and do not, like the later ones, split immediately into the characteristic feathery laminae. ”

“ It is only after the first few dozen leaves have been shed and the cylindrical, woody stem becomes visible that the plant begins to acquire its characteristic aspect, which is complete when flowering commences in about the sixth to eighth year. The coco palm matures in twenty to forty years and continues to bear almost continuously for sixty to eighty years longer.
The growing point of the tree is at the apex. The terminal bud is always present, enveloped and shielded by the bases of several young and unexpanded leaves that make up the top of the plant. ”

“ Now, as he walked, he saw an old woman sitting near a coco palm making a cup of coconut shell. And she, hearing his footstep, looked up and cried, "Little brother, wilt thou climb and pluck me some coconuts, for there is here no man to climb for me." ”

“ They grow rapidly and in about a year they have attained their full dimensions. As the coconut matures, the outer envelope begins to turn brown and to shrink. With the shrinkage the well-known, roughly triangular shape of the fruit becomes emphasized.
A full-sized fruit cluster consists of twelve to twenty coconuts. The flowering continues the year around and a tree in prime condition yields upwards of 100 fruits annually, distributed over four or five harvests. The record in the Philippines is 470 nuts from a tree.
The leaves of the coco palm are attached directly to the main stem. ”

“ The Cocos nucifera, or coco-nut palm, is a native of the island, and may justly be considered the most valuable 780 of its trees. It grows in vast abundance alone the entire sea-coast of the west and south sides of the island, and furnishes almost all that a Sinhalese villager requires. Its fruit, when green, supplies food and drink; when ripe, it yields oil. The juice of the unopened flower gives him toddy and arrack. The fibrous casing of the fruit when woven makes him ropes, nets, matting. The nut-shells form drinking-vessels, spoons, &c. ”

“ It is one of the most fruitful of palms, its clusters weighing from 120 to 200 ℔ each. Extensive groves of the coco-nut palm are to be found on the Caribbean coast, the fruit and fibre of which figure among the national exports. In north-eastern Colombia, where a part of the year is dry, the “curuas” form the prevailing species, but farther south, on the slopes of the Cordilleras up to an elevation of 10,000 ft., the wax-palm, or “palma de cera” (Ceroxylon andicola) , is said to be the most numerous. ”

“ The coco-nut palm, being the most useful of its entire tribe to the natives of the regions in which it grows, and furnishing many valuable and important commercial products, is the subject of careful cultivation in many countries. On the Malabar and Coromandel coasts of India the trees grow in vast numbers; and in Ceylon, which is peculiarly well suited for their cultivation, it is estimated that twenty millions of the trees flourish. ”

“ The fruit consists of a thick external husk or rind of a fibrous structure, within which is the ordinary coco-nut of commerce. The nut has a very hard, woody shell, enclosing the nucleus or kernel, the true seed, within which again is a milky liquid called coco-nut milk. The palm is so widely disseminated throughout tropical countries that it is impossible to distinguish its original habitat. It flourishes with equal vigour on the coast of the East Indies, throughout the tropical islands of the Pacific, and in the West Indies and tropical America. ”

“ A Chinese proverb says that there are as many useful properties in the coco-nut palm as there are days in the year; and a Polynesian saying tells us that the man who plants a coco-nut plants meat and drink, hearth and home, vessels and clothing, for himself and his children after him. ”

“ Hence the coco-nut has readily been able to dispense with the three kernels which each nut used in its earlier and less developed days to produce. But though the palm has thus taken to reducing the number of its seeds in each fruit to the lowest possible point consistent with its continued existence at all, it still goes on retaining many signs of its ancient threefold arrangement. The ancestral and most deeply ingrained habits persist in the earlier stages; it is only in the mature form that the later acquired habits begin fully to predominate. ”

“ They are then covered lightly with mould, the leaf folded over, and a small stone placed on the top, to prevent its opening; in eight or ten days the young shoots appear above the ground; the leaves are then opened to give them light and air, and a shelter from the sun, either in the shape of plantain or banana leaves, is not forgotten; but the coco-nut and other species of palm, on account of their fibrous structure and great durability, are always preferred. ”

“ The fleshy mesocarp of the fruit of Elaeis guineensis of western tropical Africa yields, when crushed and boiled, " palm oil." Coco-nut oil is extracted from the oily endosperm of the coconut. Wax is exuded from the stem of Ceroxylon andicola and Copernicia cerifera. A variety of " dragon's blood, " a resin, is procured from Daemonorops Draco and other species. Edible fruits are yielded by the date, the staple food of some districts of northern Africa. The coco-nut is a source of wealth to its possessors; and many of the species, e.g. ”

“ I instinctively gazed over the side and saw far off, opposite the weather-side of the moonlit sky-line, curling and tossing breakers, where liquid masses soared and dissolved on the coral reefs of an enchanted isle; for enchanted it looked to me as the tiny wind drifted us onward. Slowly the inland palm-clad mountain ranges rose, and the groves of coco-palms and dark-leafed tropical trees, and out of the creeks and bay came native canoes filled with paddling, singing savages! ”

“ COCO-DE-MER, or DOUBLE COCO-NUT, s. The curious twin fruit so called, the produce of the Lodoicea Sechellarum, a palm growing only in the Seychelles Islands, is cast up on the shores of the Indian Ocean, most frequently on the Maldive Islands, but occasionally also on Ceylon and S. India, and on the coasts of Zanzibar, of Sumatra, and some others of the Malay Islands. ”

“ The quantity of food which each tree yields is too small, the growth of the trees too slow, and the space which each plant occupies too considerable ever to render the cabbage of the palms a permanent staple food of any country.
Dr. Arruda has not spoken of the dendezeiro or dende tree, which, next to the coco tree, is the palm which is of the most service to the Pernambucans. An oil of good quality is made from the nut, and is sold in Recife as a culinary ingredient, being more generally used than the coco oil. ”

“ When, however, we come to inquire why it is that this beach species is the only representative of the genus in Hawaii and Tahiti, we are met with the possibility of its having been introduced by the aborigines. The tree is almost as useful to a Polynesian as the coco-nut palm, and it has been cultivated by him in some of the atoll-groups, as in the Marshall and in the Radack archipelagoes. ”

“ For as the trees grow, and the crops raised between them diminish, the coco-palms will require little or no care, but yield fruit the whole year round without further expense; and the establishment can then be removed elsewhere, to reclaim a fresh sheet of land. ”

“ But as whatever feeds a young plant will also feed an animal, and as many animals betray a felonious desire to appropriate to their own wicked ends the food-stuffs laid up by the palm for the use of its own seedling, the coco-nut has been compelled to inclose this particularly large and rich kernel in a very solid and defensive shell. ”

“ It bears flowers and fruit of all ages at the same time. The black showed us the rings on the stem, which were about four inches apart. They are left by the leaves falling off as the palm grows; and as two leaves fall off every year, I conclude that they grow about eight inches in that time. The coco de mer is as useful as the more common cocoa-nut. With the leaves houses are thatched; the trunk serves for troughs and piping; with the leaves and fibres of the petiole baskets and brooms are made; from the fibrous bark rope called coir is manufactured—so are hats and baskets ”

“ The uses to which the various parts of the coco-nut palm are applied in the regions of their growth are almost endless. The nuts supply no inconsiderable proportion of the food of the natives, and the milky juice enclosed within them forms a pleasant and refreshing drink. ”

“ Palermo begins well. Unfortunately, we suddenly find before us an avenue of sickly coco-palms, whose bare trunks are covered with dead leaves, giving an unpleasing perspective of broom-handles. This tree, which is so fine in Brazil, is not in its element here. When planted in rows, even in the streets of Rio, it is more surprising than beautiful. It is in groves that it best displays its full decorative [Pg 55] qualities. I take the liberty of suggesting that M. Thays should pull up the horticultural invalids and plant eucalyptus or some other species in their place. ”

“ C, Upper portion of Coco-nut seed, showing e, embryo, embedded in a, endosperm.
marked with circular scars indicating the position of those leaves which have now fallen away. It varies in diameter from the thickness of a reed (as in Chamaedorea) to a sturdy pillar-like structure as seen in the date-palm. Palmyra palm (fig. 7) or Talipot. In other cases the very slender stem is prostrate, or
Fig. 2. — Daemonorops Draco (a Rattan Palm) . I, Young shoot much reduced. 2, Part of stem bearing male inflorescence. 3, Part of female inflorescence. ”

“ Every nut which falls and lies, throws out, during the wet season, its roots into the sand; and is ready to take the place of its parent when the old tree dies down.
About thirty to fifty feet is the average height of these Coco palms, which have all, without exception, a peculiarity which I have noticed to a less degree in another sand- and shore-growing tree, the Pinaster of the French Landes. They never spring-upright from the ground. The butt curves, indeed lies almost horizontal in some cases, for the lowest two or three yards; and the whole stem, up to the top, is inclined to lean ”

“ Then the nuts gradually swell out to an enormous size, and ripen very slowly, even under the brilliant tropical sun. (I will admit that the tropics are hot, though in other respects I hold them to be arrant impostors, like that precocious American youth who announced on his tenth birthday that in his opinion life wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.) But the worst thing about the cocoa-nut palm, the missionaries always say, is the fatal fact that, when once fairly started, it goes on bearing fruit uninterruptedly for forty years. ”

“ In some few instances it is obvious that this variability is of later date than culture. The most conspicuous case is that of the coconut. This valuable palm is found on nearly all tropical coasts, in America, as well as in Asia, but in Africa and Australia there are many hundreds of miles of shore line, where it is not found. Its importance is not at all the same everywhere. On the shores and islands of the Indian Ocean and the Malay Archipelago, man is chiefly dependent upon it, but in America it is only of subordinate usefulness. ”