THE ORCHARD FRUITS 



211 



water holes. The cultivation of date palms was introduced into 

 Florida and California by Spanish missionaries during the six- 

 teenth and seventeenth centuries. Date "gardens" are, however, 

 chiefly developed in the hot Coachella valley of southern Cali- 

 fornia. Mesopotamia produces 80% of the world output of the 

 commercial dried date. 



The COCONUT palm, (fig. 1 50) most important economic plant 

 of the tropics, is a tall slender tree whose smooth gray trunk is a 

 marked contrast to the massive rough one of the date palm. The 



SEED 



EMBRYO 



Fig. 151. — Coconut fruits are 

 dry drupes with a fibrous brown 

 portion enclosing the seed, which 

 is the coconut of commerce. 



Fig. 152.— The 

 fig fruit develops 

 from a hollow re- 

 ceptacle surround- 

 ing numerous 

 small achenes. 



foliage is somewhat similar, consisting of large pinnately com- 

 pound leaves. Coconut palms are ragged and wind-swept in 

 appearance, and usually have a characteristic leaning habit. The 

 coconut palm, no longer found in the wild state, may have origi- 

 nated in the Malay archipelago. But since all the other species of 

 the coconut palm genus are native to South America, it may have 

 originated there and been dispersed westward to the Pacific 

 islands in prehistoric times. Today coconut palms are common 

 along seacoasts throughout the tropics. The fruits (fig. 151) are 

 three-sided dry drupes with a smooth rind, an outer fibrous 

 brown portion and a hard stony inner region which forms a shell 



