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that coconuts do not grow toward the sea in order to be able to drop 

 their fruits into the waves, but because this side is bare to the sun. 

 The trunks of the palms reach out toward the sea for the same reason 

 that house plants turn toward the window. Many writers overlook 

 this fact, but there are exceptions, as the following statement will 

 show : 



. . . We must also give up the poetic fancy that the coconut tree stretches out 

 towards the sea because it loves the briny breeze. The truth is, that the tree is a 

 lover of light, and will bend in any direction to reach it; and as there is no obstruction 

 on the sea shore it naturally bends in that direction and would do the same if the open 

 space were inland. So sensitive is it to shade of the lightest that it instinctively 

 bends away from it, and instances may be seen where the tree has grown almost 

 horizontally till outside the influence of the shade before it assumed its upward 

 growth. a 



The better exposure to the sun goes far to explain the fact that 

 coconut palms usually thrive better close to the sea. It is easier to 

 to give coconuts the necessary exposure along the beach where the 

 other vegetation is less luxuriant than a few rods farther back, and 

 the beach locations where the coconuts will thrive may be of no use 

 for any other crop. Coconuts are accordingly planted in many spots 

 where no other evidences of agriculture appear, so that the unwary 

 traveler has many opportunities to form conclusions which a little 

 further investigation would dispel. 



It is very natural, no doubt, to assume that the coconuts rising up 

 from among other vegetation or overhanging the sea from the end 

 of a promontory (pi. 54, fig. 2) are wild palms, but a moment's 

 reflection would make it apparent that the planting of palms in such 

 a place is necessarily the work of man. Coconuts might be stranded 

 on a low or sloping beach, but they are not to be thrown up on high 

 ground where the waves do not come. And if they were carried in 

 among the other plants they could not by any possibility have sur- 

 vived. The other vegetation has to be cleared away when coconut 

 palms are planted. 



The possibility that a coconut might be stranded on a newly formed 

 island and multiply in the unoccupied soil, according to the fable, 

 may not be absolutely excluded, but we know that the monopoly 

 would not be of long duration. The very prosperity of the palms 

 would but assist in the gathering of more fertile soil and hasten the 

 ascendency of their forest-forming competitors, many of which are far 

 better able than the coconut to establish themselves on unoccupied 

 shores. The game would be a losing one, with extinction in prospect 



« Jardine, W., The Cultivation of the Coconut Palm, Tropical Agriculturist, vol. 24, 

 p. 151. (1905.) 



