304 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



The rattans and other climbing palms that produce slender, long- 

 jointed trunks are able to outgrow other vegetation, but all the palms 

 that form thick, short-jointed trunks suffer the same disadvantage 

 as the coconut. They are unable to compete with other quick- 

 growing forms of vegetation that cover and smother young palms 

 before they can escape by the building of trunks. 



The coconut must be reckoned among the palms that are unable 

 to develop without full exposure to sunlight. The seedling plants 

 attain a considerable size in locations that are partially shaded, but 

 this apparent growth arises from the nourishment stored in the huge 

 seed. Large amounts of sunlight appear to be necessary to enable 

 young coconut palms to make any independent growth. This intol- 

 erance of shade is a fact of primary importance in the study of the 

 coconut, either from the botanical or from the agricultural standpoint. 

 It explains why coconuts are not able to establish themselves as wild 

 plants in any of the wide tropical regions of low elevation in which 

 they are cultivated. 



SOUTH AMERICAN ORIGIN OF THE COCONUT PALM. 



As soon as we recognize that the coconut is unable to establish 

 itself or even to maintain its existence on any tropical seacoast, we 

 are no longer at libert}^ to believe that the species originated in 

 maritime situations. It becomes evident that the home of the plant 

 must be sought in interior localities where the young palms could 

 escape competition with the more luxuriant types of tropical vege- 

 tation. While we imagine that the coconut can be disseminated by 

 ocean currents to any part of the Tropics, it seems hopeless to fix 

 upon any particular coast line as the original home of the species, but 

 when we understand that the species must have originated in an 

 interior locality the problem of origin is immediately simplified and 

 very definite conclusions can be reached. 



If the coconut could be submitted as a new natural object to a 

 specialist familiar with all other known palms, he would without 

 hesitation recognize it as a product of America, since all of the score 

 of related genera, including about three hundred species, are Amer- 

 ican. With equal confidence the specialist would assign the coconut 



a The only member of the family Cocaceae that has an extra-American distribution 

 is the African oil palm, Elaeis guineensis, a species rather closely related to the Amer- 

 ican Elaeis melanococca. Even in this case the idea of maritime distribution has 

 become unnecessary. The African oil palm has been found in Brazil in an apparently 

 wild state, and may have originated in that country. Dr. F. H. Knowlton, of the 

 U. S. Geological Survey, has showed me seeds of the African oil palm which were 

 taken from an albatross shot off the west coast of Africa by the United States Eclipse 

 Expedition of 1889-90. The powers of flight of the albatross are such as to render it a 

 much more effective agent of distribution than the ocean currents. Moreover, the oil 

 palm does not behave as a littoral species, like the coconut. 



