330 CONTBIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



may well assist in increasing the power to attract and hold water for 

 the young plant. 



The more we appreciate the highly specialized adaptive character- 

 istics of the coconut the more unwarranted appears the idea of 

 maritime distribution. The huge size of the nuts and the necessary 

 limitation of their number, would have no meaning from the stand- 

 point of maritime distribution, the maximum production of flour- 

 ishing trees under favorable conditions being reckoned at only 200 

 nuts. Related palms comparable in size to the coconut, such as 

 Attalea and Acrocomia, produce seeds in vastly greater numbers. 

 The number of pistillate flowers is relatively very small in the coconut 

 palm and many of these are abortive (pis. 62, 63, 64). It would be 

 impossible for any large number to develop. The chances of any 

 sea-borne nut floating to a favorable destination are so infinitesimal 

 that the natural perpetuation of the species by this method would 

 be entirely impracticable. The specialization of the coconut toward 

 greater size is in itself an evidence that natural selection has favored 

 this tendency. If a few large seeds had not been more advantageous 

 to the palms than many small seeds we may be sure that the large 

 seeds would never have developed. How important the factor of 

 human selection may have been we do not know, but it does not 

 appear that larger size has been a desideratum. The largest varie- 

 ties do not seem to bespecially preferred in cultivation. 



BEHAVIOR OF THE COCONUT PALM IN INTERIOR LOCALITIES. 



The popular impression that the coconut will grow to normal 

 maturity only in the immediate vicinity of the ocean has arisen from 

 the fact that this palm, like the date, is a salt-loving plant and in 

 continuously humid tropical countries finds no congenial soil except 

 near the seashore. Many agricultural treatises and general works 

 of reference continue to repeat the traditional theory of direct and 

 necessary connection between the coconut and the sea. Even 

 Nicholls asserts the limitation to the seacoast. 



The climate, however, must be a maritime one, the palm delighting in the saline 

 atmosphere of the seacoast. When the tree is planted inland, in order to make up for the 

 want of a saline atmosphere, it is usual to put salt in the holes before the seedlings are set 

 out, and as much as half a bushel of salt is sometimes used in this way for each tree.° 



But this view is no longer universal, and is very definitely denied 

 by a recent writer on coconut culture in British India. 



The old idea that it would not thrive far from the influence of the sea breeze is ex- 

 ploded, as it grows well all over the low country, where the soil and rainfall are suitable, 

 and even in sheltered valleys at an elevation of 2,000 feet, as in the town of Badulla.& 



a Nicholls, H. A, A., Tropical Agriculture, p. 167. (London, 1900.) 

 iJardme, W., The Cultivation of the Coconut Palm, Tropical Agriculturist, vol. 

 24, p. 151. (1905.) 



