THE SEYCHELLES - ISLANDS OF THE GIANT PALMS 49 



The fronds may measure as much as five 

 metres across. 



Toung palms with leaf-stalks over four metres 

 long. Compare height of man. 



female flowers, as big as a clenched fist, are borne on a sinuate or zig- 

 zag axis between one and two metres long. But most striking of all is 

 the fruit, which resembles two kidney-shaped nuts joined together, and 

 which has been vividly called "Negro's buttocks". It is both the largest 

 and the heaviest fruit in the vegetable kingdom, being between 30 and 

 40 centimetres long and weighing 25 kilograms or more. When unripe 

 it is covered by a rather thick layer of coir, which gradually shrinks to 

 a thickness of a little over a centimetre. Under this fibre layer, in fallen 

 fruits, we found a whole animal community of beetle larvae, earwigs, 

 mites, earthworms, and other creatures which shun the light. Inside the 

 coir, as in the coconut, we get the hard, dark-brown shell (with the cha- 

 racteristic bilobed form. The unripe nut is found, when cut open, to 

 contain a greyish-white, gelatinous endosperm, which gradually hardens 

 from the outside. When fully hardened just before germination, it is 

 nearly as hard as ivory and of the same yellowish-white colour. 



No wonder that these immense nuts, so remarkable outside as well as 

 inside, should have given rise to fantastic legends when they were found 

 drifting in the Indian Ocean or washed ashore in the Maldives, in India, 



