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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 



[9] 



