COCONUT PALM.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 242, 12 October 1929, Page 6 (Supplement)

COCONUT PALM.

UNTRACED BY SCIENTISTS, . ORIGIN SUGGESTED. THEORIES OF BIRTHPLACE. Science is still grappling with,,, the mystery of the origin of the coconut palm, according to Dr. John K. Small, head curator of the museum at the New York Botanical Garden, Bronx Park, and associate of .Thomas A. Edison, during the inventor's rubber experiments in Florida. . , ,

While many have located the birthplace of the palm in parts of the American .Continent, 'the eminent 'student of palms; Baccari, has pointed oiit that an African palm is its closest relative.

Its true nationality may always remain in doubt.'The reason is that'its great thick-husked "nuts 1 are inveterate travellers and colonisers,-sailing the seas since time immemorial, and starting a new race of coconuts wherever they were cast up on a tropical shore.

'These sturdy ' coconut vessels, in which the elements of a forest of palms lie dormant, can brave the storms of the ocean 'for 1 months, only sprouting into apparent life when conditions favourable to colonisation have been found.

To-day coconuts are found along the seashores* of 'Florida,*. Central and South America, the West Indies, the South Sea, Islands, India, Australia.and Africa. One species, at least calleii; Cocosy seems to be peculiar to South America.

" Coconuts grow sparsely in such climates as that of southern California, but the extensive,groves are in warmer countries, and. the great commercial plantations are in the Orient."

The biggest single area .of coconut palms in the world is in the. -Philippines, where they cover the entire southern end of the island of Luzon in a dense grove. An automobile «an pass for a day beneath their shade, towns and villages are built among, them, the, oil and- meat of their nuts are' the : materials of an important ; industry, while .their milk fur'nieies a native beverage. ,

Thus the coconut is at home in many parts of the world. But if a plant's nativity can be judged by the place where its enemies lurk, there are certain reasons for upholding the theory that its origin may really be African. Only in Africa is found the robber crab, which climbs the coconut tree and feeds on the nuts, or the huge rhinocerous bettle which devours the young coconut leaves.