232 



EDIBLE PRODUCTS. 



[Sept. 1906. 



The Germination of the Coconut 



By Ivor Etherington. 



The seeds of most plants grown as agricultural crops are so small that no 

 attention need be given to the position of the seed in the germinating bed, parti- 

 cularly in the case of minute seeds scattered broadcast or sown by means of a seed- 

 drill. Even with much larger seeds of the planting products of the tropics, such as 

 tea, cacao, and the species of rubber plants, Ceara, Castilloa and Hevea, there is no 

 necessity to take precautions that the seed may lie in any particular way in the 

 soil. However placed the seeds seem to germinate equally well, and the young 

 seedling plants grow up equally straight and sturdy. The coconut, however, has 

 such a very large seed and the aperture in the kernel, through which the 

 embryo plant has to push its way up through the surrounding husk, is so placed 

 that the position of the coconut on the seed bed is of some importance in its 

 germination. 



If the nut is laid on its side, horizontally, or nearly so, the plumule and 

 radicle grow vertically up and down in a straight line through a minimum of the 

 surrounding husk, and the water in the kernel reaches the germ and keeps it moist 

 during germination. This the native Sinhalese practice from their empiric 

 knowledge. 



An extensive series of experiments in the germination of coconuts has 

 lately been brought to a conclusion in Madagascar, and the results have been 

 published by Mons. E. Prudhomme, Director of Agriculture of Madagascar, in his 

 book " Le Cocotier." In order to ascertain what are really the advantages or 

 disadvantages of the different positions which can be given to a nut at the time of 

 sowing, he compares the results given by the germination of five plots of fifty nuts 

 placed in the following five positions: — 



(1) Nuts placed vertically, point downwards. 



(2) Nuts ,, ,, point upwards. 



(3) Nuts placed obliquely, point downwards. 



(4) Nuts ,, ,, point upwards. 



(5) Nuts placed horizontally. 



The point of the nut is understood to be the end opposite the stalk. 



The nuts germinated in all five positions, but not with the same facility in 

 every case, and Mons. Prudhomme makes interesting remarks on the result. In 

 position (1) the germ has to make a fairly long passage through the surrounding 

 husk (fibre) before breaking through it, especially in those nuts which are 

 characterised by a great thickness of fibre on the peduncle end of the nut, such as 

 the long shaped green coconut, the Seychelles coconut, and the long pointed 

 " Pondicherry red," and others. In this position the plumule grows quite vertically 

 just to the spot where the stalk of the nut is, or just beside it. Germination then 

 takes place under good conditions : besides, in this position the nuts occupy very 

 little room in the first seed bed ; but against this it can be argued that it furnishes 

 plants less able to resist wind and not holding in their places so well when planted 

 out in the field. "However that may be, I have seen this method employed on a 

 large scale, in the north-west of Madagascar, by a planter who has assured me 

 that it is very satisfactory." I cannot say much, continues the writer in the 

 French, for the 2nd position, (nuts vertically, point upwards) which seems altogether 

 illogical, because the future stem is obliged to curve on itself and to follow round 



