The coco palm

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THE COCO PALM

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AUG 16 1922

FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

CHICAGO
1922

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Field Museum of Natural History

Department of Botany
Chicago, 1922

Leaflet Number 2

The Coco Palm

The coco palm grows along tropical shores
throughout the world. Its origin has at times been
ascribed to the western hemisphere where it is found
in places on the west coast of Central and South Amer-
ica, but it is more likely that it belongs originally
rather to the East Indian Archipelago and Oceania.
Its cultivation in any case probably originated in south-
eastern Asia where many varieties of it exist and where
its uses are more thoroughly appreciated than in the
American tropics.

The fruits of the coco palm float and are readily
transported by the sea. They will germinate even
after a lengthy immersion in salt water, which helps
to account for its wide distribution. On the smaller
Oceanic Islands it constitutes the most important part
of the vegetation and together with a few wild strand
plants, perhaps the most constant and characteristic.
It is however seldom encountered except in a state of
cultivation. As an escape it may be one of the first
of waterborn plants to arrive on newly elevated land
or reef. On a volcanic island in Polynesia, visited
four years after its appearance by the British man-of-
war Egeria, the vegetation was thus found to consist
of two young coconut palms and three other plants.
Preferring the loose soil of sandy beaches it is mostly
confined to them though in places it is grown away
from the shore and even at a not inconsiderable alti-
tude. In the Philippines it is said to have been planted

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2 Field Museum of Natural History

up to 5,000 feet but above 1,500 to 2,000 feet, it fails
to flourish.

To the traveler its tall cylindrical trunk, slightly
curved near the base, often sixty to eighty or more feet
in height, seems to impart as nothing else a tropical
character to the landscape. Few tropical trees can
surpass it in utility. In some of the regions where it
grows it supplies to the inhabitants almost all the
necessaries of life.

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 con-
siderable 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 pene-
trated the husk and the first leaves have appeared.
The young plants are then set out some fifteen to
twenty-five feet apart. 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 as-
pect, 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.

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The Coco Palm 3

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. The flower-buds
are situated in the leaf-axils, one to each leaf. A
flower-bud on its first appearance is two or three feet
long, cylindrical and tapering. Its green color is due
to an enveloping sheath, the spathe. As the bud
swells with growth it bursts its envelope, the spathe
splitting lengthwise, revealing the flowering spike of
a pale straw color. In a few days this has freed itself
from its spathe and has become a fully expanded
branching spike, in general shape much like a gigantic
corn tassel. Each of its twenty to thirty branches is
closely set with prismatically compressed, small buds
of a pale straw color and of a horny texture. These
are the buds of the male flowers and soon begin to
open, usually a few at a time on each branch, after
which they fall off. 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-pollin-
ated. Within a short time the young coconuts look
much like huge, green acorns. They grow rapidly and
in about a year they have attained their full dimen-
sions. As the coconut matures, the outer envelope
begins to turn brown and to shrink. With the shrink-
age the well-known, roughly triangular shape of the
fruit becomes emphasized.

A full-sized fruit cluster consists of twelve to

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4 Field Museum of Natural History

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. They are commonly twenty feet
or more in length. They are shed one by one as the
fruit clusters mature and drop, or are removed, so that
the clusters of ripe fruit are always associated with
the lowermost leaves. Each leaf-base with its sheath
completely encircles the central trunk, the character-
istic ridges or roughness of which are due to the old
leaf-scars. The dry bast-like leaf sheathes may be seen
surrounding the bearing portion of the trunk. Split
and partially torn away from their respective leaf
bases, they give it an untidy appearance. Their pres-
ence is puzzling to account for, till one observes them
in position on the topmost leaves. There they serve
to tie together the bundle of young leaves surrounding
the growing tip, a matter of great importance to the
tree in regions subject to severe winds.

The near-ripe fruit of almost full size, but still
green, contains a fluid, slightly milky in appearance
and sub-acid, the "coconut milk," or "water," which
furnishes a pleasant drink. To obtain it, one must
cut through the outer fibrous tissue, then the inner
dense and hard layer which, like an egg shell, sur-
rounds the embryo plant with its stored food-material.
At an early stage this forms only a thin gelatinous
layer within the shell, the remainder being the fluid
"milk." As the coconut ripens the layer of "endo-
sperm," the botanical term for this food material, be-
comes thicker and of firm consistence and the water
more like milk.

In some places a drink is obtained from the coco

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THE IIP

OF fHE

The Coco Palm 5

palm in another manner. The stem and branches of
the flower spike are tied into a bundle and cut, and
over the cut end is fixed a vessel consisting of a length
of bamboo. The sap which would ordinarily go to
the formation of the cluster of fruit is obtained in this
way. The bamboo is emptied each day, the collector
sometimes passing by aerial bridges from tree to tree.
The fermented juice is variously known as "tuba" or
"toddy." Eleven million gallons of it were produced
in the Philippines in 1913.

The main product of the tree is, however, the white
meat of the coconut. The mature nuts are allowed to
fall naturally or are gathered four or five times a year
by pulling them down with hooks or by climbing the
trees when situated too high to be reached from the
ground. They are collected into piles and husked by
beating against the sharpened end of a stake or iron
point fixed upright in the ground. They are then
split with a bush knife or cleaver and are left in the
sun to dry somewhat, which loosens the white coconut
meat from the shell. The dried meat is known as
"copra." It constitutes an important article of com-
merce. Dessicated and grated it forms the shredded
coconut of the confectioners, but its principal value
depends on its oil content, fifty per cent or more by
weight. The oil is obtained from the copra by pres-
sure. The remaining "cake" is a valuable fodder. The
coconut oil is at ordinary temperature, a soft, white
fat of somewhat objectionable taste and odor. It has
always been highly esteemed as a fat for soap making,
but its present-day, more important use dates from the
discovery that the addition of an atom of hydrogen to
the molecule of fat renders it perfectly bland and com-
estible. (See Slosson, "Creative Chemistry" for an
account of vegetable fats.) It is now widely used in
the preparation of butter substitutes and is consumed

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6 Field Museum of Natural History

in large quantities in France and Germany. The
United States imported in the month of September of
1921, 3,000,000 pounds of husked coconuts and copra.
The normal monthly European consumption is at least
fifteen to twenty times as great. The production is
capable of almost indefinite expansion.

The husk of the coconut is also of considerable
value. It furnishes a fibre known as coir (pronounced
kir, Portuguese cairo from Malayalam kayar, rope,
cord) and is one of the principal brush, belting, matting
and rope making materials. Cordage made from it is
rough, but light and has the virtue of floating which
is advantageous for certain purposes, as for ship's
cables. Even paper has been made from coir, at least
one factory for the purpose existing in the Straits
Settlement. Certain species of coconut are especially
cultivated for coir, since they yield large quantities of
fibre. Coir and copra production are, however, almost
mutually exclusive — copra requiring the mature fruit
while a good quality of coir must be made from the
green husk.

The wood of the coco palm is known as "porcupine
wood." It is furnished only by the outer part of the
cylindrical trunk, the central core being simply fibrous.
Its usefulness is rather limited and restricted mostly
to regions where it grows. The bast-like leaf sheaths
are used for native clothing, the leaves for plaiting
and thatching, the fibrous core of the trunk, for cord-
age and brushes, in fact every part of this tropical tree
is utilized. From the inner shell of the nut, dippers,
cups and other vessels are easily fashioned. The Mus-
eum displays a varied collection of these as well as of
all other coconut products, such as oil, sugar, candles,
cordage, brushes, mats.

The Dutch East Indies, Ceylon, Straits Settle-
ments, Philippines, India, Zanzibar, South America

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The Coco Palm 7

and West Indies are the chief producing and exporting
countries in order of their importance. The Philip-
pines, for instance, produce annually about a billion
nuts, 150 millions of which are consumed locally, and
the remainder exported. The value of the exports in
1913 was fifteen to twenty million dollars. A ton of
copra, the product of about 5,000 nuts, brought them
about $100. 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. A few coco
palms are grown in the United States, mostly for orna-
mental purposes, on the east coast of Florida and along
the Gulf. The Museum specimen is a reconstruction
within the limitations of an exhibition case, of the
bearing portion of a South Florida palm in a well

developed stage.

B. E. Dahlgren.

The exhibits in the Field Museum pertaining to the Coconut
palm and its economic products are to be found in the Department
of Botany, Halls 25 and 28 on the second floor.

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