Coconut Planters Manual. 



ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 



Botanical evidence would seem to point to -the fact that the 

 coconut is a native of Tropical America, and that it was carried west- 

 ward across the Pacific. From Polynesia, it is presumed, it reached 

 New Guinea and Malaya, and thence found its way to Ceylon. 



The botanist de Candolle was of opinion that its original habitat 

 was the Eastern Archipelago, somewhere near Sumatra and Java, and 

 that the nuts floated East and West. 



According to local tradition the earliest known palms were on 

 the southern coast near Weligama, where the medicinal value of coco- 

 nut oil was discovered by King Kusta-Raja (whom the figure carved 

 on a rock near "Weligama is believed to represent)— a supposed leper. 

 History tells us that it was along the South- West coast of the Island 

 that coconuts came to be first established, a fact that would tend to 

 support de Candolles theory on the origin of the palm ; but it may 

 be that its propagation was fostered by the more enterprising inhabi- 

 tants of the populous western side of the Island at a time when there 

 was scarcely any settled population on the East coast. 



Little interest seems to have been taken in coconut planting by 

 the Portuguese, but with the arrival of the Dutch the cultivation of 

 the palm was stimulated. 



At the beginning of the last century, the western and southern 

 coasts of Ceylon presented, with certain intervals, a fairly continuous 

 grove of coconut palms, but it did not extend far inland (10 million 

 coconut trees being the reckoning between Dondra Head and Kalpitiya), 

 Bertolacci pointed out the large field for an extension of planting on 

 the North-West coast around Chilaw and Puttalam, and he mentions 

 that the peninsula of Kalpitiya was in his own time within 18 years 

 changed fx-om a barren unproductive area to an expanse of the finest 

 plantations of this palm, so that the cultivation extended all 

 the way from Colombo via Negombo nearly to Chilaw. Little 9V 



