COOK THE COCONUT PALM IN AMEBIC A. 333 



frequently cultivated in the interior, especially in the drier districts, but the natives 

 do not seem to be so well acquainted with it as is the case in South America, and 

 they have no special names to designate it. 



The palms shown in plate 52 (frontispiece) are growing in the city 

 of Salama near the geographical center of Guatemala. The broad 

 valley or plateau in which Salama is situated has an altitude of 

 900 meters, and has a distinctly desert climate, but the coconut 

 prospers apparently as well as on the seashore. The leaves are not 

 as large as usual in coast-grown palms (compare with pi. 65), but 

 this is in accordance with a very general principle of plant growth, 

 that plants produce smaller leaves under the stronger light and more 

 rapid transpiration afforded by desert conditions. 



The coconut is also planted with success in other dry valleys in 

 Guatemala, notably in that of Cajabon (pi. 66, fig. 2). It is a curious 

 fact that in several of these places the prosperity of the palms is 

 coincident with the prevalence of goiter, a disease commonly sup- 

 posed to be associated with alkaline water, which might be an advan- 

 tage to the palms. 



In eastern Guatemala, near Livingston, the coconut palm has 

 given an apparent illustration of its requirement of salt by refusing 

 to grow within a few rods of the ocean on slopes moistened only by 

 fresh water. The nature of the soil and the water supply will prob- 

 ably be found to constitute a very large factor in all such cases. 

 The palms thrive much better in the town of Livingston, built on a 

 part of the same slope where the agricultural production of coconuts 

 appears to have failed (pi. 54, fig. 2, facing p. 299) . Proximity to the sea 

 is not enough without the right conditions of the soil. Other tropical 

 tree crops, such as coffee and cacao, often thrive under dooryard cultiva- 

 tion in districts where agricultural production is much less success- 

 ful. Even at Panzos, 90 miles from the sea, coconuts are still able 

 to grow in the yards about the houses. a 



The dryness of the interior valleys of Guatemala, and the alkalinity 

 of their scant water supplies, are to a large extent artificial conditions 

 induced by the long-continued presence of agricultural populations 

 and the consequent destruction of the forests and denudation of the 



a An instance where proximity to the sea enabled palms to thrive in otherwise 

 unfavorable soil is given in Spons' Encyclopedia: 



"Coco-nuts growing in mangrove soil on the side of creeks, and more or less saturated 

 with salt, have their milk brackish, and the sap is saline also. These trees do not 

 suffer from the attacks of the rhinoceros beetle, and are found to bear much sooner 

 than those planted on a sandy soil. As an illustration of this, while trees planted at 

 Penang thirty years ago, on sandy soil, have not yet borne fruit — although they are 

 fine-looking trees — others in the same plantation, only 10 years old, but on low ground, 

 where the sea tide comes up daily, washes their roots, and runs off again, are in full 

 bearing, giving 50 — 100 nuts annually, and the kernel is as thick as that of nuts grown 

 on sandy soil, and produces as much oil." 



