300 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL TTERBARIUM., 
that coconuts do not grow toward the sea in order to be able to drop 
their fruits into the waves, but because this side is bare to the sun. 
The trunks of the palms reach out toward the sea for the same reason 
that house plants turn toward the window. Many writers overlook 
this fact, but there are exceptions, as the following statement will 
show: 
... We must also give up the poetic fancy that the coconut tree stretches out 
towards the sea because it loves the briny breeze, The truth is, that the tree is a 
lover of light, and will bend in any direction to reach it; and as there is no obstruction 
on the sea shore it naturally bends in that direction and would do the same if the open 
space were inland. So sensitive is it to shade of the lightest that it instinctively 
bends away from it, and instances may be seen where the tree has grown almost 
horizontally till outside the influence of the shade before it assumed its upward 
growth.¢ 
The better exposure to the sun goes far to explain the fact that 
coconut palms usually thrive better close to the sea. It is easier to 
to give coconuts the necessary exposure along the beach where the 
other vegetation is less luxuriant than a few rods farther back, and 
the beach locations where the coconuts will thrive may be of no use 
for any other crop. Coconuts are accordingly planted in many spots 
where no other evidences of agriculture appear, so that the unwary 
traveler has many opportunities to form conclusions which a little 
further investigation would dispel. 
It is very natural, no doubt, to assume that the coconuts rising up 
from among other vegetation or overhanging the sea from the end 
of a promontory (pl. 54, fig. 2) are wild palms, but a moment’s 
reflection would make it apparent that the planting of palms in such 
a place is necessarily the work of man. Coconuts might be stranded 
on « low or sloping beach, but they are not to be thrown up on high 
ground where the waves do not come. And if they were carried in 
among the other plants they could not by any possibility have sur- 
vived. The other vegetation has to be cleared away when coconut 
palms are planted. 
The possibility that a coconut might be stranded on a newly formed 
island and multiply in the unoccupied soil, according to the fable, 
may not be absolutely excluded, but we know that the monopoly 
would not be of long duration. ‘The very prosperity of the palms 
would but assist in the gathering of more fertile soil and hasten the 
ascendency of their forest-forming competitors, many of which are far 
better able than the coconut to establish themselves on unoceupied 
shores. The game would be a losing one, with extinction in prospect 
« Jardine, W., The Cultivation of the Coconut Palm, Tropical Agriculturist, vol. 24, 
p. 151. (1905.) 
