THE COCONUT 



129 



CULTURE 



Selection of Seeds. Coconuts to be used as seed should 

 be picked from trees which are conspicuous among their 

 neighbors growing under the same conditions for produc- 

 ing large nuts, and many of them. There is no reason 



FlG. 91. Coconuts germinating in seed bed 



for selecting seed from prolific trees which are prolific 

 simply because they grow in especially good places ; for 

 then the productiveness is not a character of the tree, but 

 of the place, and the place cannot be inherited. It is 

 best not to let the nuts of an especially good tree fall to 

 the ground, because some of them will crack. Neither 

 is it a good plan to select large nuts out of a pile; for a 

 tree with very fe\v nuts often has especially large ones. 



Germination. Coconut seed are germinated above 

 ground and are not planted until the roots and plumule 

 appear. Seed nuts may be hung up in bunches in wet 

 weather or stacked under a shelter and watered; but the 



