Cocoanut tree

“ A [Pg 176] peculiarity of this tree is, that it has no substance in the interior of the trunk, [50] yet the outside, to the thickness of an inch and more, makes the finest of boards, and, when seasoned, will turn a board nail with one stroke of the hammer. The top of the palm yields a vegetable which is much used upon the table, and, when boiled, resembles in flavor our cauliflower. The cocoanut tree very much resembles the palm, the branches diverging, like the ribs of an umbrella, from one common centre, among which the fruit hangs in tempting clusters far out of reach from the ground. ”

“ The cocoa-nut tree requires a sandy and well-drained soil; and although it flourishes where no other tree will grow, it welcomes a soil of a richer quality and produces fruit in proportion. Eighty nuts per annum are about the average income from a healthy tree in full bearing, but this, of course, depends much upon the locality. This palm delights in the sea-breeze, and never attains the same perfection inland that it does in the vicinity of the coast. There are several varieties, and that which is considered superior is the yellow species, called the "king cocoanut." ”

“ The cocoanut tree springs up everywhere, but in the spots where yams and taros are grown the sand is hollowed out, and a pit formed, from one to two hundred yards long, and of varying width, into which decaying cocoanut leaves and refuse are thrown, till a rich soil is formed. [1] It is certain, however, that among the Polynesians the cocoanut is a cultivated plant no less than the yam, taro, sweet-potato, sugar-cane, banana, breadfruit and numerous other species found in use throughout the tropical islands of the Pacific. ”

“ I often watched the natives climb the tall cocoanut trees, about eighty feet high, with only the fine fern-like leaves at the extreme top. These trees yield twenty to fifty cocoanuts per month and live to a great age. No one can have any idea of the delicious milk until he has drunk it fresh from the recently gathered nuts. A young native will climb as nimbly and as swiftly as a monkey, and will be as unfettered by dress as his Darwinian brother. The fruit is severed from the tree by the useful bolo. ”

“ Brought from adjacent islands in small sailing boats, it is loaded on vessels at the capital port. A cocoanut tree produces a dollar's worth of copra yearly. Forty trees is the number generally planted to the acre. Eight years' time is required from planting until bearing. The trees require very little care, and, if not blown down by storms, will yield for a hundred years.
It is marvelous to what uses the cocoanut tree and its fruit can be put. Besides being a staple food of natives, the pulp, together with cocoanut oil, is made into cakes for cattle, particularly dairy cows. ”

“ That the cocoanut will grow and thrive upon the immediate seashore, in common with other plants, is simply an indication of its adaptability to environment. That it is at a positive disadvantage as a shore plant may be determined conclusively by anyone who will examine the root system of a seashore-grown tree upturned by a wash or tidal wave, and one uprooted from any cause, farther inland. ”

“ The wood of the tree is hard and durable and is made into many household articles. The hard shell of the [86] nut makes good cups and dishes. So you see the cocoanut tree affords almost everything the people in the hot countries need. ”

“ Each, as it falls, leaves a ridge upon the trunk, which assists the climber in reaching the fruit. The blossoms of the cocoanut spring from the trunk and open amid the bases of the lower leaves; as the tree sends forth a succession of blossoms every few weeks, the fruit is found upon it in every stage of maturity at the same time, from the blossom and the cluster of pretty little green nuts not larger than plums, to the full-grown fruit as large as a man's head, hanging from a tough stalk and ready to be plucked. ”

“ A great messenger of life, and one of the most transportable, is the solid cocoanut. Not only does it travel well, but, when thrown upon shoal or rock, if it find only a little poor white sand, which would support nothing else, the cocoanut contents itself there, finds brackish water not a jot less agreeable than the freshest; germinates, thrives, grows into a robust cocoa tree. ”

“ More useful is the native cocoanut palm, that grows everywhere, both in and out of cultivation. Several million cocoanuts are exported from the Isthmus every year. The brown, fuzzy shell of the cocoanut, as we know it in the grocery store at home, is only the innermost husk. As it grows on the tree, the cocoanut is as big as a football, and as smooth and green as an olive. Cut through the thick husk of a green cocoanut with a machete, and you have a pint or more of a thin, milky liquid that is one of the best thirst-quenchers in the world. ”

“ I once heard a gouty northern invalid say that a cocoanut tree might be poetical, possibly it was; but it looked like a feather-duster struck by lightning. ”

“ When older, this matting has every appearance of coarse cotton cloth, and is used to wrap food, or is made into bags and even rough garments, specially for fishermen.
The white flowers are small and grow along a branching stalk, protected by a sheath, and just above the commencement of the leaf. From them is made the cocoanut-brandy that enables the native to forget his sorrows. Flowers and nuts in every stage of development are on the same tree, a year elapsing between the first blossom and the ripe nut. ”

“ Into the inner shell which it has vacated, it throws little fibrous threads which slowly absorb the albumen, and thus sustain its new life as it rapidly develops. First a few leaves grow upward, which from the very outset begin to assume the pinnate [Pg 208] form of the cocoanut leaf, while, stretching earthward, a myriad of little threads of roots bury themselves in the ground. Though the tree will grow to a height of sixty feet or more, these roots will never individually exceed the size of the fingers on one's hand. ”

“ The structure of the cocoanut seems well fitted to endure winds of almost any force, and that a remarkably abundant and strong circulation [18] of air is essential to its best development is well shown by comparing a tree subjected to it with the wretched, spindling specimen growing in a sheltered glen or ravine. ”

“ Many varieties of the palm flourish here,—the cocoanut palm producing fruit in greater abundance than in any other country of the West Indies.
THE COCOA PALM. The most abundant cocoanut groves in the world are said to be found on Puerto Rico and the other islands of the Antilles. This tree usually grows near the coast, for it loves the salt water; but it is sometimes found on the hill slopes a short distance inland.
"The tree grows to a height of from sixty to eighty feet, lives a hundred years, bears a hundred nuts each year, and is said to have a hundred uses for man." ”

“ TO dwellers in Ceylon, the cocoanut palm calls up a wide range of ideas. It associates itself with nearly every want and convenience of native life. It might tempt a Singalese villager to assert that if he were placed upon the earth with nothing else whatever to minister to his necessities than the cocoa-nut tree, he could pass his existence in happiness and contentment. ”

“ There were lots of cocoanuts, and some of 'em had their coats on."
"This brown husk," continued his governess, "is a valuable part of the nut, for the toughest ropes and cables are made of its fibres, as well as the useful brown matting so generally used to cover offices and passages. Brushes, nets and other domestic articles are also manufactured from the husk. Scarcely any other tree in the world is so useful to man or contributes so much to his comfort as the cocoanut-palm. Food and drink are alike obtained from it. ”

“ The cocoanut trees, which are not very firmly rooted, and have at the top of their high cylindrical stems a heavy plume of leaves, among which the nuts nestle in luscious clusters, had suffered severely wherever they were exposed to the fury of the gale. ”

“ Banana groves and orchards bending under the weight of the rich nutritious fruit, tall cocoanut-trees with half a ton of ripening nuts in every tuft top, ant-hills nearly as high as native houses, rippling cascades, small rivers winding through the green valleys, tall flamingoes presiding over tiny lakes, and flowers of every hue and shape, together with birds such as one gazes at with curiosity in northern museums, all crowded upon our vision on this trip inland. ”

“ These trees supply timbers for building, thatch for roofs and walls of houses, hats, fans, household utensils, oil, food, and drink. The trees are often used as corner posts for houses, thus giving a secure anchorage against wind-storms and earthquakes, while the roofs and sides are covered with coconut leaves.
Young Coconut Trees
Each nut is surrounded by a large fibrous husk, so that the fruit as it comes from the tree is two or three times as large as the nut itself. ”

“ They had left the cocoa-nut grove, and entered the chapparel. Here was a deeper twilight, and all sorts of trees lent their foliage to make the shade. The artu with its delicately diamonded trunk, the great breadfruit tall as a beech, and shadowy as a cave, the aoa, and the eternal cocoa-nut palm all grew here like brothers. Great ropes of wild vine twined like the snake of the laocoon from tree to tree, and all sorts of wonderful flowers, from the orchid shaped like a butterfly to the scarlet hibiscus, made beautiful the gloom. ”

“ The Cocoa-Nut Tree—The Bread-Fruit Tree—The Bannian Tree—Fountain Trees—The Tallow Tree—The Paper Tree—The Calabash Tree—Remarkable Oak—Dimensions, &c. of some of the largest Trees now growing in England—Upas, or Poison Tree.
The Cocoa-nut Tree.
Of all the gifts which Providence has bestowed on the Oriental world, the cocoa-nut tree most deserves our notice: in this single production of nature, what blessings are conveyed to man! It grows a stately column, from thirty to fifty feet in height, crowned by a verdant capital of waving branches, covered with long spiral leaves ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just so the little patch above water protects the corals to leeward, and there the island increases fast; for the birds not only settle on it, but they make their nests and rear their young, and so every year the soil increases; and then, perhaps, one cocoa-nut in its great outside shell at last is thrown on these little patches—it takes root, and becomes a tree, every year shedding its large branches, which are turned into mould as soon as they decay, and then dropping its nuts, which again take root and grow in this mould ”

“ 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. ”

“ The cocoanut palm clusters in dense groves along the beaches, the long leaves murmuring to the sea breeze as they wave to and fro, casting their grateful shade upon the native village. Of all trees none is more useful to tropical man than the cocoanut. ”

“ The cocoa-nut—the tree of a thousand uses—grows luxuriantly on the coral-made land, after it has emerged from the ocean; and the scanty dresses of the natives, their drinking-vessels and other utensils, mats, cordage, fishing-lines, and oil, besides food, drink, and building material, are all supplied from it. The Pandanus, or screw-pine, flourishes well, and is exactly fitted for such regions: as it enlarges and spreads its branches, one prop after another grows out from the trunk and plants itself in the ground ”

“ Unlike the cocoa-nut trees, which bend to every gale and are never quite straight, the coco-de-mer trees are as upright as iron pillars. At the ago of 30 the trees first put forth blossoms. The female tree alone produces the nut, and is 6 feet shorter than the male, which attains a height of 100 feet. ”

“ In each garden are a number of Coconut trees, some thin Halmilla trees, and often a Mango tree, or a dark-leaved Jak tree, with its enormous light green fruit hanging on pedicles from the trunk or larger branches, as well as a Lime tree, and four or five clumps of Plantain stems nearer the dwelling. Round the base of one or two of the Coconuts or Halmilla trees are piled on end long bundles of firewood, nearly two feet thick and six or eight feet long, the unconsumed sticks from the chēna, collected by the women, tied round with creepers, and carried home on their heads. ”

“ It is the cocoanut palms that put the touch of picturesque adventure on the place. Here are the bold beach-combers of the tropic world come to add storm-tossed beauty to The Garden. The cocoanut is the adventurer of all seas, born of salt and sand on the wave-worn shore it matures, clad in a brown, elastic, water-defying husk that will bear its live germ whithersoever the waters will take it. The storms that tear it from the yielding stem and toss it in the brine send it on through scud and spin drift, to currents that drift lazily to all shores. ”