Cocos nucifera

“ II. The haari, or cocoa-palm (Cocos nucifera) , whose trunk, bark, leaves, and fruit are pressed into their service by the natives. The fruit, however, is the most important, as it is used as meat for man and beast, as well as a beverage, and to obtain oil from it. Mixed with fine sandal-wood shavings and other aromatic substances, the oily liquid pressed out from the cocoa-nut is used by the Tahiti women as a much-prized cosmetic (monoï) , with which to lubricate their long beautiful black hair. ”

“ The Moss dress of the little woman is described as being of a golden colour, which shone, when seen at a distance, like pure gold, but on close inspection lost all its lustre. It is thought that many of the stories about hidden treasure which are rife on the Fichtelgebirge are to be attributed to the presence there of this curious species of vegetation.
COCOA-NUT PALM.—The Cocos Nucifera (Sanscrit Nârikera) , or Cocoa-Nut Palm is the most extensively-cultivated tree in the world, and its importance to myriads of the human race is almost beyond conception. ”

“ After being macerated, the fibers, called coir or cair, are combed. Ropes made of them are elastic and hardy against decay. They are worked into articles of esparto and brushes, and we tread them under feet in cocoa mattings. From the hard shell of the nut are made cups and dishes, which are susceptible of a ready polish, and can be carved. The leaves can be utilized, like those of other palms, but lack the suppleness of the leaves of other kinds.
Not all the species of Cocos bear fruits as large as those of nucifera. The small species also contribute to the maintenance of man and industries. ”

“ When the fruits reach us, the albumen has hardened and become somewhat tough and indigestible. This nut is one of the sources of wealth—in some cases, perhaps, the only one—of the coral islands of Oceania and some other tropical regions. With the top in the sun and its roots bathed by the sea-waters—its favorite station—the cocoa-tree (Cocos nucifera) continues in good condition to the age of seven or eight hundred years. The dry nut, called copra, is marketed by the thousand tons every year, to be employed in various uses for which fats are ”

“ The cocoa-nuts, or the fruit of the cocos nuciferacocos nucifera, Linn. is too well known to want any description. The plantains, or fruit of the musa paradisiacaparadisiaca, Linn. is likewise well known to all navigators, as the produce of hot countries. The bread-fruit is a production of a tree not yet described by Dr. Linnæus; Lord Anson found it upon the isle of Tinian; Dampier and the great Ray take notice of this very useful and curious tree. Yams are the roots of a plant known under the name of dioscorea alata. The okra is the fruit of the hibiscus esculentus, Linn. ”

“ This order contains many lofty trees, which are, with one exception, without branches, and bear a tuft of large leaves, called fronds, at the summit. The flowers are small, with bracts, and they are enclosed in a spathe,453 which bursts on the under side. The mass of flowers is called a spadix; and it is succeeded by the fruit, which, when ripe, is either a drupe or a berry. In the Cocoa-nut Palm (Cocos nucifera) the fruit is a drupe; but the pericardium consists of hard, dry, fibrous matter, which is uneatable, the only part fit for food being the albumen of the kernel. ”

“ Fruit large; pericarp fibrous; pores towards the base of the stone.—Species 1 (C. nucifera L., coco-nut-palm) . Cultivated and sometimes naturalised on the shores of the tropics. The stem and the leaves furnish wood, fibre, tanning materials, vegetables, wine, and medicaments; the fruits are edible and yield oil, fodder, and a drink. [Subtribe ATTALEINAE.] Cocos L.
17. Leaves with long prickles. Spadices branched; spathes 2 or more, complete.
Corolla of the female flowers imbricate in bud. Ovary 1-celled, with a laterally affixed ovule. Stigmas 3. 18 ”

“ The stems of this genus are lofty, generally cylindrical and smooth. The leaves are large and regularly pinnate. The spadix is simply branched, and the fruit is ovate oblong, and with an outer fibrous covering.
Eighteen species of Cocos are known, seventeen being natives of South America, principally of Brazil, while one only, the well-known Cocoa-nut, is a native of the Old World, though it is now universally cultivated in every part of the tropics. ”

“ Family COCACEAE The cocoid palms are a distinctly American group, the African oil-palm, Elaeis Guineensis and the cocoanut being the only outliers of the family which have been supposed to be indigenous in the Old World. South America is the center of distribution and is the home of a large proportion of the two hundred or more species. Only five genera reach Puerto Rico, and one of these, Cocos, was probably not a native of the island. ”

“ For this reason the laborer in the West Indies always takes care to put in a good plant of cocos to his provision ground as a stand by, and knowing their value, is perhaps the only person who bestows any degree of care or attention upon them. ”

“ It is very probable that the dry season, which was at its height when we were there, had destroyed the leaves of the plants, so that we had no guide, while the Indians, knowing well the stalks, might find them easily. Whether they knew or ever made use of the cocos, I cannot tell; the immense sharpness of every part of this vegetable before it is dressed makes it probable that any people who have not learned the uses of it from others may remain for ever ignorant of them. ”

“ The western shore of the island of Cocos is precipitous, and very much elevated above the level of the sea. The calcareous stones, of which it is composed, being much exposed to the injuries of the weather, are very friable. I found there the nutmeg-tree, which Rumphius has described, under the denomination of myristica mas (Rumph. Amb. vol. 2. tab. 5.) The fruit was then but young. It is more elongated than that of the species which is cultivated. ”

“ Finally one mature specimen was found, with both trunk and leaves strongly suggesting the cocoanut, but much smaller. The leaves are light green, the leaflets in one plane, and the fibers separating from the narrow base of the leaf. The fibers are few and flimsy, but like those of the cocoanut and other South American species of Cocos. The palm stood within a few feet of a small permanent brook, down which the seeds had evidently been carried and there were several young palms along the bank. ”

“ I saw nowhere any member of the Palm family, which is the more singular, as 360 miles northward, Cocos Island takes its name from the number of cocoa-nuts. The houses are irregularly scattered over a flat space of ground, which is cultivated with sweet potatoes and bananas. It will not easily be imagined how pleasant the sight of black mud was to us, after having been so long accustomed to the parched soil of Peru and Northern Chile. The inhabitants, although complaining of poverty, obtain, without much trouble, the means of subsistence. In the woods there are many wild pigs and goats ”

“ Nature has given the cocoa-nut the power of preserving its vitality almost indefinitely. The fallen nuts float on the sea and drift hither and thither. Once washed up on a beach and dried by the sun, the nut thrusts out little green suckers from those "eyes" which every one must have noticed on cocoa-nuts, anchors itself firmly into the soil, and in seven years will be bearing fruit. The fallen fronds decay and make soil, and so another island becomes gradually clothed with vegetation. In Bermuda the cedar replaces the cocoa-nut palm. ”

“ The presumption arising from the fact that all other species of Cocos are American, may be offset by the asserted fact that, although the tree formed forests on the islands off Panama when these were first visited by Europeans, it would appear to have only recently reached the West Indies and the adjacent main. So useful a tree, if indigenous to one side of the isthmus, would have been transported to the other and to the islands beyond by the very earliest races of men. ”

“ The cocos or kalo (Colocasium esculentum) grows well in the wetter lands, but is more common in Belize than in Guatemala, and in neither place attains the prominence as a vegetable that it enjoys in the Pacific Islands or in China and the East Indies. The cassava (Manihot utilissima) , so important a food in South America, is here mostly confined to Carib use, and I have never seen it inland or on the south coast; as a dietary its importance merits attention, and it should be exported. In a dry climate it keeps well, and I have specimens four years old still perfectly good. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is fitted to other purposes besides that of food, for it serves to give light; and mixed with soda [483] it yields good soap, white and hard. One hundred cocos give one canada of oil of the canadas of Pernambuco. So that each coco costing 10 reis, a canada may be obtained for 1280 reis, or 7s. 11⁄4d.
From the fibre of the outward rind of the coco, which is called cairo, may be made all kinds of cordage; even cables are manufactured from it.
The only means by which the fibre of the coco rind can be obtained, are by beating and maceration ”

“ To impress upon one the character of the vegetation of the coast, a group of coco palms must be imagined, waving their long leaves wildly in the wind or shining like gold in the sun. Essentially a littoral product, the coco-palm is rarely found far inland, and the equally beautiful and tropical plant, the banana, leaves it behind, in the advance up the mountains, as the foot-hills are reached. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Very ornamental stove palms, allied to Cocos, having the trunk (when present) , foliage, fruit-stalks, spathes, and sometimes the fruit, covered with spines. The flowers develop from the axils of the old decayed leaves. Drupes oval, one-seeded, orange or yellow, in some species fragrant. Leaves pinnate, with linear segments, dark green above, and often of a silvery white below. The species thrive in a compost of two-thirds rich loam and one-third vegetable mould; water may be given copiously. Propagation may be effected by seeds, which should be sown in spring in a hotbed ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Meanwhile, the spongy mass inside begins gradually to absorb all the nutty part, using up its oils and starches for the purpose of feeding the young plant above, until it is of an age to expand its leaves to the open tropical sunlight and shift for itself in the struggle for life. It seems at first sight very hard to understand how any tissue so solid as the pulp of coco-nut can be thus softened and absorbed without any visible cause; but in the subtle chemistry of living vegetation such a transformation is comparatively simple and easy to perform. ”

“ The coco-palm, although far away from the sea-coast, its native habitat, also flourishes in great perfection, contributing not a little to the splendor of the vegetation in these truly tropical gardens, with its glorious crown of monster leaves. And last, though not least, the plantain and banana claim here the supremacy which everyone accords them over all productions of the tropics. A few plants of each only are sufficient to supply a whole family with bread, vegetables, fruit, and preserves of various kinds. ”