and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.— August, 1912. 



INLAND PLANTING OF COCONUTS. 



An Important Question for Plantation 

 Companies. 

 [From a Correspondent.'] 



The commonly accepted fallacy that the coco- 

 nut palm, now one of the chief revenue-yielding 

 trees of the tropics, must be planted near the 

 sea to thrive has resulted ;in greatly restricting 

 the planting of coconuts to regions in proximity 

 to the sea or salty lagoons. It may interest com- 

 panies and others owning suitable lands in- 

 land for the planting of coconuts to ascertain the 

 truth of the matter as the proceeds from a good 

 plantation of coconuts is certain to increase 

 dividends. Careful investigations in the tropics 

 embolden the writer to state that the coconut 

 palm will grow far inland where the conditions 

 of its environment include high illumination of 

 the air, prevalence of winds tropical heat, ade- 

 quate rainfall, proper soil contents and free 

 underground mass water movement. The leaves 

 will transpire freely, and the requirements of 

 the palm be forthcoming for its sustenance and 

 the production of coconuts. The foundation for 

 the common belief that the coconut must be 

 planted near the sea lies in the fact that it 

 appears to have halophytic tendencies. It is 

 notoriously given to throngiDg low-lying shores 

 of tropical seas and salty lagoons, it is even 

 seen in such places as] the Antilles, where the 

 palms are regularly washed by the sea at high 

 tides. But there is a very simple reason for 

 this gathering together of coconut palms on tro- 

 pical sea-washed shores, and this is concerned 

 with the propagation of the palm. 



The Agency of Watek. 

 Water is simply the inanimate agent employed 

 by Nature to enable the seeds of the coconut 

 palm to stray away from, one botanical province 

 to another, so establishing new colonies, as it 

 were. The means whereby Nature has enabled 

 propagation to be carried on in the botanical 

 world are marvellous in variety and design. 

 The mosses, fungi and lichens, for instance, are 

 propagated by an impalpable powder ; some 

 single individuals having ten million seeds. 

 >Some seeds, like those of the fir, are winged . 

 indeed, there are said to be 138 genera having 

 winged seeds. We are familiar with the large 

 number of seeds which have been furnished with 

 downy appendages when ripe, enabling them to 

 be carried enormous distances by the gentlest 

 breezes. There are certain aquatio plants whose 

 Beeds take the form of shells and thus drift 

 along to new homes. The coconut is so designed 

 K to flwt in water with a minimum liability 



to injury, and it is water currents which have 

 caused coconuts to be distributed on low-lying 

 tropical shores amid abounding fecundity. Of 

 a nut so cast up we can easily imagine the 

 history from the quickening of the seed to the 

 maturity of the palm. It becomes at once ap- 

 parent that the heavy nut must remain more 

 or less near the water, being too heavy to be 

 carried by the most powerful of birds, and even 

 by that other common seed distributor — the 

 wind. Many a hurricane has, doubtless, played 

 a part in the distribution of the coconut palm 

 a little way inland, as may be the same with 

 whirlwinds, but it remains to that busy seed 

 distributor— man— to bring into being coconut 

 plantations in inland places, for man has been 

 the means of transporting all manner of seeds 

 into regions .where, but for him, they would 

 never have penetrated. It may be accepted 

 that granted 'suitable conditions, a coconut 

 taken and planted by man with careful design 

 inland will flourish just as well as if it were 

 cast by chance upon some sea shore or embedded 

 in the warmjmud of some estuary. 



Inland Groves. 

 Reliable witnesses have described magnificent 

 groves of coconut palms observed in India, far 

 inland, healthy and abundant crop yielders. 

 More and more planting is being carried on in 

 the inland parts of Ceylon. As regards Mexico, 

 the writer examined in Chiapas, Mexico, majes- 

 tic palms bearing excellent nuts as far away 

 as 120 miles from the sea. While on the Isthmus 

 of Tehuantepec, some 90 miles from the sea, on 

 the River Coatsacoalcos, he found coconuts with 

 substantial kernels. Strong winds, the glare, 

 may-be, of the water, the purity and high 

 illumination of the air which mark tropical 

 seashores, among other conditions, render them 

 pre-eminently suitable for coconut plantations. 

 It has ^been a source of surprise that a sandy 

 soil by a seashore should contain a sufficiency 

 of food for the palm — a great vegetable organism 

 requiring a large supply. The following figures 

 may be of interest in this connection: — Allowing 

 a specific gravity of two, and 20,000 metres of 

 soil to the hectare (about l l\ acres) we have 

 40,000 tons of soil from which the palms can 

 obtain what they require. Taking 70 trees to 

 the acre, or say 173 to the hectare, yielding 80 

 nuts per tree per annum as a maximum, and a 

 fall of 16 leaves per .tree per annum, there is an 

 annual drain on the soil of about 400lb nitrogen, 

 6001b potash and 185 lb phosphoric acid. In the 

 40,000 tons of soil, being average soil near the 

 sea, it is estimated are '07 per cent, nitrogen, 

 '50 potash and '07 P. acid, giving 28 tomj 



