COOK — THE COCONUT PALM IN AMERICA. 301 



at the end of a few generations, even though the coconuts arrived 

 first and succeeded in establishing themselves. 



Many cultivated plants and weeds have escaped from gardens and 

 adopted an independent existence in parts of the world very remote 

 from their original home. The finding of such a species in a wild 

 state proves that the conditions are favorable to its growth, even 

 though it gives us no evidence regarding the original home of the 

 species. When a plant with the prolonged, world-wide opportunities 

 of the coconut fails anywhere to escape and become established, but 

 remains completely dependent upon man, it seems obvious that the 

 tropical coasts where man has planted it do not afford the ideal 

 conditions for its existence, the conditions under which it would be 

 likely to develop as a wild plant. 



Other kinds of palms afford excellent examples of intolerance of 

 shade, showing that this character is shared in different degrees by 

 many members of the group. An extreme case is found in Central 

 American fan palms of the genus Brahea, that usually grow on preci- 

 pices of limestone rock. In forested districts these fan palms are 

 confined to the perpendicular walls, the only situations that afford 

 them the necessary exposure to sunlight. Most of the seeds of these 

 palms must fall into the forests below, but young palms are found 

 only in the crevices of the cliffs. It does not appear that even small 

 seedlings are developed without more light than the forest conditions 

 afford. If natural selection could have rendered the species more 



a Dr. H. B. Guppy has held (Journ. Trans. Victoria Inst., vol. 24, p. 267. 1890) 

 that the coco palm was native in the Cocoe or Keeling Island of the Indian Ocean, to 

 the southwest of Sumatra, but his account is far from convincing. He admits that the 

 island had been visited by Malays before the advent of European settlers, and also that 

 the crabs never permit the young palm seedlings to become established unless the 

 nuts are well buried by the planters. 



Schimper found in his extensive studies of Malayan strand floras no instance of 

 successful self-grown coconuts. (Schimper, A. F. W., Die indo-malayische Strand- 

 flora, 162. 1891.) Mr. W. E. Safford reports that coconuts, along with seeds of many 

 other plants, are frequently drifted to the sandy windward beaches of the island of 

 Guam, but that no palms grow on this uninhabited coast. 



A recent work entitled "The New Flora of the Volcanic Island of Krakatau," by 

 Prof. A. Ernst, contains a photograph of a group of nearly a dozen coconut palms, 

 standing well back from the strand, all of nearly the same size and at nearly equal 

 distances. Reports of the early visits to the island did not show the presence of coco- 

 nut palms, though many other plants had established themselves. An explanation 

 of the presence of the palms away from the strand is probably to be found in the 

 changes that have continued to take place in the topography of the new island, as indi- 

 cated in the following statement: 



. . . "It is obvious that the oldest strand-plants, which sprang from the seeds and 

 fruits from the drift formed in the first year, have been gradually separated from the 

 beach by a constantly increasing belt and that during this shifting of the shore-line 

 new plant-germs were introduced with the pumice and took part in the formation 

 of the present discontinuous strand-forest" (p. 69). 



