Cocoa palm

“ Flowers of every hue and fragrance blossomed along the way.
The cocoa-nut palm abounded, of all heights and ages. The older ones had a smooth bark, made of its own dead leaves, crowned with long, bending branches, made up of spines like ribs going out of a backbone. It begins in these spines, and they seem to grow together as new ones shoot out, so that the trunk is itself a leaf. These leaves hang dead and loose in their upper edges, ragged and gray, but bind the trunk at their juncture. Every new burst of leaves gives a new cincture and a new raggedness. ”

“ It accompanies the margin of the mighty desert in all its sinuosities from the shores of the Atlantic to the confines of Persia, and is the only vegetable affording subsistence to man that can grow in such an arid situation. The annual produce of an individual is from 150 to 260lbs. weight of fruit. The cocoa palm furnishes annually about a hundred cocoa-nuts. It is spread throughout the torrid zone; but occurs most abundantly in the islands of the Indian archipelago. The family of palms is supposed to contain a thousand species, some of large size, forming extensive forests. ”

“ The moss is waist-high, the ferns wave twenty feet overhead, the bamboo drapes a feathery fringe by every stream, the cocoa trees grow right up to the road or railroad which sweeps along as on an avenue between them, while at every crossing the white roadway is lined by the majestic sentinels of plantain, coco-nut palm and breadfruit tree. ”

“ Of course, a European who trades in palm-oil prefers to collect it in the form of coppra—i.e., dried cocoa-nut—as a much larger amount of oil is obtained by pressure of machinery.
Another hardy child of these coral-isles is the pandanus, or screw-pine, as it is commonly called, because its leaves, which grow in tufts at the tips of the branches, are all set like a screw, twisting round the stem, which is thus marked with a spiral pattern from the root upward. Like the cocoa-palm, it grows in the clean dry coral-sand, where there is apparently no moisture ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fruits are generally small, when compared with the size of the trees; the common cocoa-nut being one of the largest in the whole family. The kernel of many is too hard to be eaten, and the outer covering is often fibrous or woody; but in others the seeds are covered with a pulpy or farinaceous mass, which in most cases furnishes a grateful and nutritious food.
The purposes to which the different parts of Palms are applied are very various, the fruit, the leaves, and the stem all having many uses in the different species. ”

“ The cocoa-palm offers the greatest means of sustenance to the natives, for they obtain from it wine, fruit, oil, and vinegar. These people eat many kinds of herbs which grow both on land and in the sea. ”

“ The cocoa palm bears a bountiful crop of nuts, which in turn yield oil and a coarse kind of sugar. The sago palm yields the valuable pearl sago of commerce. The areca palm produces the betel-nut, which, together with a fresh pepper-leaf and a bit of moist lime, is in the mouth of nearly every East Indian native in lieu of tobacco. ”

“ The seeds, one of which is found in each fruit, are semi-transparent and very hard. Beads and other ornaments are made from them.
Amid the tropical growth of the west of Africa the oil palm flourishes. Its products furnish the incentive to an immense commerce, attracting European ships to coasts once given completely over to the slave trade.
Along the tropical coasts the cocoa palm grows, while along the Gambia River vast quantities of a species of plant called the groundnut are extensively cultivated. ”

“ In consequence of the very different elevations of the land, the productions of nearly all parts of the world can here be cultivated successfully. In the hot districts, chiefly bordered by the sea, cotton, indigo, cacao, coffee, sugar, tobacco, and cocoa-nuts come to perfection. The cocoa-palm, enjoying the advantage of the sea-breeze, here grows to a height of seven hundred feet above the ocean. ”

“ They are margined by a beach of white coral sand, with occasional thin beds and ledges of coral conglomerate, succeeded by a belt of tangled bushes and low trees, after which the trees become higher and the ground tolerably free from underwood, with occasional thickets of woody climbers. The cocoa-palm grows here in small numbers, usually several together, overtopping the other trees among which one of the Bombaceae (silk-cotton trees) and Pisonia grandis attain the greatest dimensions, having frequently a girth of twelve or fifteen feet, with a height of sixty or seventy. ”

“ It is remarkable, that no palm of the old world is found in America, except the cocoa-nut and the oil-palm of the coast of Guinea; and that there is but one species common to Asia and Africa. The palms of New Holland, also, are peculiar to that country; and I believe that she said, those of the Mauritius only occur in those islands. The cocoa, the date, and the sago palms, are the most widely distributed; but the true home of the palms is the torrid zone; for, of 110 well known species, only twelve are found outside the tropics. ”

“ The fruit consists of a thick external husk or rind of a fibrous structure, within which is the ordinary cocoa-nut of commerce. The nut has a very hard, woody shell, inclosing the kernel, within which again is a milky substance of a rather agreeable taste.
The cocoa-nut palm is so widely disseminated throughout tropical countries that it is impossible to distinguish its original habitat. It flourishes with equal vigor on the coast of the East Indies, throughout the tropical islands of the Pacific, and in the West Indies and tropical America. ”

“ The cocoa-nut tree belongs to the palm family: it requires to [250] grow seven years before it bears fruit; but after this period, and for a whole century, it yields continually the same product—that is, every month about twenty large nuts. This produce never fails, and on the same tree may be seen continually flowers and fruits of all sizes. The cocoa-nut affords, as everyone knows, nutritious food, and when pressed yields a quantity of oil. The shell of the nut serves to make vases, and the filamentary parts are spun into ropes and cables for ships, and even into coarse clothing. ”

“ Fil’s father, who was a planter of wide acres, replied:
“The cocoa bean and the coconut are two very different plants. Do not confuse them. The cocoa bean, out of which you grind cocoa powder and chocolate for a drink, for bonbons, and for puddings, comes out of a fruit shaped like a large red cucumber. This fruit grows on a tender bush, which must be shaded by a thick banana palm. In each fruit are twenty of these seeds, or cocoa beans.
“They have hard skins, and are very bitter and stimulating. When eaten, they excite the heart, and thus make a person feel active and alive. ”

“ Go where we will, we are astonished and bewildered by the novelty and the exuberance of the vegetation that surrounds us.
If we drive over the broad and well-kept roads along the western coast, we pass under shady avenues of cocoa palms bending under their burden of fruit. If we go to the cacao groves—and they are large and numerous here—our eyes are gladdened by the vermilion bloom that covers the protecting Erythrina umbrosa.6 In a glen hard by is a giant ceiba, transformed, by the countless number of creepers and epiphytes to which it has given hospitality, into a vast air-garden. ”

“ I will not conclude this chapter without alluding to the cultivation of the cocoa-nut palm-tree. Owing to the long time it is necessary to wait for the first crop, not so much has been done in growing this tree. It seldom bears until seven years old, but when once it is in good bearing, it goes on for a hundred years. The yield of a tree averages one hundred nuts yearly; the bright green blossom and the ripe fruit appear simultaneously. The cocoa-nut palm grows best near the sea, but does not require such rich, moist soil as the banana. ”

“ There are scarcely seven hundred inhabitants: and, excepting in the village of Mariguitar, we saw only plantations of cocoa-trees, which are the olives of the country. This palm occupies on both continents a zone, of which the mean temperature of the year is not below 20 degrees.* (* The cocoa-tree grows in the northern hemisphere from the equator to latitude 28 degrees. Near the equator we find it from the plains to the height of 700 toises above the level of the sea.) It is, like the chamaerops of the basin of the Mediterranean, a true palm-tree of the coast. It prefers salt to fresh water ”

“ Hence the cocoa-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. ”

“ When introduced early in the 18th century it was as a trisyllable co-co-a, a mispronunciation of cacao or cocoa, the Spanish adaptation from the Mexican cacauatl.
COCO DE MER, or Double Coco-nut, a palm, Lodoicea Sechellarum, which is a native of the Seychelles Islands. The flowers are borne in enormous fleshy spadices, the male and female on distinct plants. The fruits, which are among the largest known, take ten years to ripen; they have a fleshy and fibrous envelope surrounding a hard nut-like portion which is generally two-lobed, suggesting a large double coco-nut. ”

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

“ Owing to the remunerative return from cocoa cultivation in parts of the country, this commodity has attained the first place among exported agricultural and forest products. In recent years, moreover, development has been so rapid that the country is now the largest producer of cocoa in the world. Among exports, rubber, palm oil, palm kernels and timber follow it in order of importance. ”

“ 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 cocoa-nut has been compelled to inclose this particularly large and rich kernel in a very solid and defensive shell. ”

“ Trees and plants fill the whole inclosure, the paths only excepted, and the variety and richness of the fruit and foliage are beyond description. Tall cocoa palms, covered with fruit, tower high in air in all parts of the grounds, and the bananas, of which there are four varieties, fill in beneath as an undergrowth, though fifteen to twenty feet in height. Then there are red-berried coffee trees, with bright green leaves ”

“ At the heat of noon a siesta with a cool cocoanut at my elbow. The view was beautiful on all sides; our great tree full of birds; the rising and dying winds in the palms like the gathering oncoming rush of the rains. From mountain to mountain sounded the wild, far-carrying ululations of the natives, conveying news or messages across the wide jungle. Towards sunset I wandered out in the groves, enjoying the many bright flowers, the tall, sweet grasses, and the cocoa-palms against the sky. ”

“ For the cocoa-tree and the island man are both lovers and neighbours of the surf. ‘The coral waxes, the palm grows, but man departs,’ says the sad Tahitian proverb; but they are all three, so long as they endure, co-haunters of the beach. ”

“ Of the cocoa palms the ordinary cocoanut tree is the most important, the oil of which is put to many and varied uses. The bamboo is much valued, the young and tender shoots making a very acceptable article of food, in the form of salads and other dishes, and the fibre is used for numerous purposes. ”

“ Then the trees change, the long tresses of an autumn-flowering orchid fall from their branches over the road; dead trees appear transformed into living beauty by multitudes of ferns, among which the dark-green shining fronds of the Asplenium nidus, measuring four feet in length, specially delight the eye; huge tamarinds and mimosa add the grace of their feathery foliage; the banana unfolds its gigantic fronds above its golden fruitage; clumps of the betel or areca palms, with their slender and absolutely straight shafts, make the cocoa-palms look like clumsy giants ”

“ Here we find the sugar-apple, alligator-pear, sapodilla-guava, limes, lemons, tamarinds, bananas, and plantain—the cocoa-nut tree, with her tessellated leaves, fanned by the breath of eternal spring-time, and ripening its refreshing fruits to nourish the thirsty residents, who would languish were they not supplied with the juices from fruits. The cocoa sheds its fruit when ripe, endangering the heads of those passing. Parents having children who play under the trees are constantly uneasy, as a full-grown cocoa-nut, falling forty feet, would nearly annihilate a child. ”