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. 



[10] 



