0. P. Cook — History of the Coconut Palm in America. 221 



Art. XXII. — History of the Coconut Palm in America ; by 



O. F. Cook.* 



Many scientific text-books and works of reference support 

 the popular idea that the coconut palm is specially adapted to 

 tropical seacoasts and is confined to maritime regions. No 

 other example of special adaptations of plants to their environ- 

 ments has had longer currency or more confident belief. 

 Nevertheless, it seems that the botanical romance of the coco- 

 nut, protected by its thick husk and floated from island to 

 island in advance of human habitation, must go the way of 

 many other pleasing traditions. What natural agencies have 

 been supposed to do for the coconut is now to be recognized 

 as the work of primitive man. The truth proves again to be 

 stranger than the fiction. 



The coconut exists in the lowland tropics only as a product 

 of cultivation. It does not plant or maintain or distribute 

 itself on tropical seacoasts, and would entirely disappear from 

 maritime localities if human care were withdrawn. The 

 habits of the palm from the botanical standpoint, its signifi- 

 cance in human history, and even its agricultural possibilities 

 are misunderstood unless we are able to lay aside the maritime 

 traditions. 



An outline of the evidence for the American origin of the 

 coconut palm and of its distribution by human agencies has 

 been published in a previous number of the Contributions, f 

 The present study carries the subject further in two principal 

 directions. It brings additional facts to show that the coco- 

 nut palm was already widely distributed in the New World 

 before the arrival of the Europeans, and that it is not naturally 

 a maritime or humid tropical species, but a native of drier and 

 more temperate plateau regions in South America. A com- 

 parison of the habits of germination of the coconut with those 

 of other related American palms shows other and very differ- 

 ent uses for the characters that have been looked upon as 

 special adaptations for maritime dissemination. 



The huge seed with its immense store of food materials and 

 its thick fibrous husk make it possible for the coconut to 

 propagate itself in the relatively dry interior localities where 

 it appears to have originated. The inability of the palm to 

 withstand shade explains why it has been unable to establish 



* Extracted from Contributions from the U. S. National Herbarium, vol. 

 xiv, pt. 2, pp. 271-342, 1910. The portions here given are from the intro- 

 duction and summary. 



f The Origin and Distribution of the Cocoa Palm, Cont. Nat. Herb., vol. vii, 

 pp. 257-293, (1901.) 



Am. Jour. Sci. — Fourth Series, Vol. XXXI, No. 183. — March, 1911. 

 16 



