NO. 7 A NEW PALM FROM COCOS ISLAND — COOK 5 



of which other traces might be found if adequate search were made 

 outside the range of the treasure-hunters. The coconut is strictly a 

 sun palm, unable to develop under shade conditions, and hence unable 

 to compete where forest vegetation is allowed to grow. Tall coconut 

 palms in abandoned plantings may survive for many years before 

 they are covered by the forest growth, but none of the seedlings 

 develop and the old palms die out eventually. 



Other parties of buccaneers may have cut more of the coconut 

 palms at Wafer Bay and hastened their extermination, but all had 

 disappeared by the end of the nineteenth century. The only coconut 

 palms that Pittier found at Wafer Bay were a recent small planting 

 of nuts brought by a treasure-seeker from the mainland of Costa 

 Rica, at Puntarenas. At another locality, near the southwestern end of 

 the island, not accessible to landing from the sea, Pittier encountered 

 a few other coconut palms of a different variety, not recognized on the 

 mainland, and possibly a remnant from the former period when the 

 Island was at least temporarily populated before Wafer's time. 



Pittier was the first to recognize that the palms on the hills were 

 not coconuts, although no specimen was obtained. But his verbal com- 

 munication was definite, and was noted in Contributions from the 

 U. S. National Herbarium, volume 14, page 291, published in 1910. 

 Also in "A List of the Plants of Cocos Island," by Alban Stewart, in 

 the Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, January 

 1912, page 388, there is mention of "an undetermined species of palm 

 occurring quite abundantly on the hillsides above both Chatham and 

 Wafer Bays." Specimens with immature fruits were collected, but 

 were not identified. Several other scientific expeditions reporting on 

 the plants of Cocos Island seem to have overlooked the native palm. 



OTHER CABBAGE PALMS 



To the early explorers and the writers of the colonial period the 

 royal palms and the related mountain palms were known as "cabbage 

 palms," referring to their use as food. The "cabbage" was the tender 

 edible bud of the palm, borne at the top of the trunk, wrapped in a 

 green cylinder of sheathing leaf-bases. The cabbage of the coconut 

 palm and of many others could be eaten in emergencies, but the royal 

 and the mountain palms were held in greatest repute, and in some of 

 the tropical colonies were destroyed in great numbers or even com- 

 pletely exterminated in districts that became populous. The palms 

 of this group which still survive in the West Indies and in Central 

 America are remote from settlements or occur in places so difficult of 



