OIL-SEEDS AND OILS 127 



tree grows from its summit and sends out no branches. At 

 its top is a crown of from twenty to thirty leaves, the new pale 

 green ones in the middle and the old yellow ones outside. 



These leaves are like enormous green feathers, with a great 

 midrib, eighteen feet long, and leaflets, each about three feet 

 in length. The midrib is so strong that the natives of the 

 countries where it grows often use it as an oar for their boats. 

 Pinna is the Latin for a feather, and so these coco-nut palms 

 are said to be pinnate-leaved palms. Each tree produces 

 about twelve leaves in a year. 



The flowers grow along a stalk in the same way as currants 

 grow, and there are several stalks on one stem. The stem is 

 enclosed in a sheath, or spathe, like that of an arum lily. 

 The male flowers are yellowish and the female ones greenish. 

 They both occur on the same stalk. As about twenty nuts 

 are produced inside each spathe, and the tree sends out 

 about twelve spathes during the year, the average yearly 

 crop of a tree is 200 nuts. They are not all ripe at the same 

 time. 



Before they have been stripped of their outer coating of 

 coir the nuts are about the size of an ordinary football, and 

 weigh about five or six pounds. The lower part of a nut 

 has ' eyes ', and looks rather like a mask, hence the Portuguese 

 gave it the name ' coco ', which in their language means 

 a mask ; the tree they called by another name. 



Coco-nut palms which grow by the sea-shore often bend 

 over towards the sea, and so nuts often fall into the water. 

 Their outer covering of fibre makes them light in proportion 

 to their size, and so they are carried along by ocean currents 

 until they reach another shore. Sometimes they are washed 

 up on to a little barren island and are the first plants to 

 sprout and grow there. 



Nowadays, however, coco-nut trees are often cultivated 

 and grown in plantations. It is found that although they 

 like sea air they will thrive a considerable distance away 

 from the sea. The young plants are generally reared from seed 



