HISTORY OF THE COCONUT PALM IN AMERICA. 



By 0. F. Cook. 



INTRODUCTION. 



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 environments has had longer 

 currency or more confident belief. Nevertheless, it seems that the 

 botanical romance of the coconut, 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 local- 

 ities if human care were withdrawn. The habits of the palm from 

 the botanical standpoint, its significance in human history, and even 

 its agricultural possibilities are misunderstood unless we are able to 

 lay aside the maritime tradition. 



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.® The present study car- 

 ries the subject further in two principal directions. It brings addi- 

 tional facts to show that the coconut palm was already widely dis- 

 tributed 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 comparison of the habits of germination of the coconut with those 

 of other related American palms shows other and very different uses 



"The Origin and Distribution of the Cocoa Palm, Contributions from the National 

 Herbarium, vol. 7, pp. 257-293. (1901.) 



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