324 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



THE COCO-NUT PALM {COCOS NUCIFERA, LINN.) 

 By Sir Everard im Thurn, K.C.M.G., C.B. 



(Read May 14,1913: Field -MarshalLordGRENFELL,G.C.B.,G.C.M.G., in the Chair. 



By word of mouth and by help of certain pictures which I have 

 accumulated during a long life spent in various lands where the coco- 

 nut palm is often the main feature in the landscape, I propose to tell 

 you enough of the appearance, the history, and the uses of the coco- 

 nut palm to leave you with a clear idea of what this tree is like. 



The nut-bearing coco-nut palm (Cocos nucifera) is not cultivated 

 for ornamental purposes in European hothouses ; for, unlike the 

 many palms so used — and unlike many species even of its own genus — 

 this palm is not beautiful when young — or perhaps ever, at least until 

 it reaches an old and very large state. It is one of the half-dozen 

 most important and most interesting of tropical plants ; yet, though 

 it is almost impossible to find a book on life or travel in the tropics 

 which is without some mention of this palm, or to take up a newspaper 

 which in any way deals with commerce and the markets without coming 

 across some reference to the nuts, I very much doubt if there are 

 many people who have passed their lives in temperate climates who 

 have any idea what the tree looks like or even know anything of the 

 nut, except perhaps that it is or was set up at country fairs to be 

 knocked down by the lucky ones at a penny a shy, and perhaps that 

 nowadays it enters into the composition of margarine and consequently 

 of "butter." 



First of all I should like to say something of the name by which 

 this tropical nut has become known to all people of Western origin. 

 It is a curious little study in word origins 



The nut seems to have been first heard of in Europe from travel- 

 lers in the East Indies — where, however, the palm was probably 

 not originally native ; and till nearly the end of the fifteenth century 

 the fruit seems always to have been referred to simply as " the Indian 

 nut." It must here be remembered that up to that time the great 

 usefulness of the fruit was not recognized even in the East Indies, 

 and that the Pacific Ocean — which it can hardly be doubted was the 

 original home of this useful species of the genus Cocos — had not then 

 been discovered. Consequently the nut was then known only as a more 

 or less interesting curiosity. The earliest use of another name seems to 

 have been in 1498 or 1499 by the Portuguese traveller Vasco da Gama, 

 who, obviously on account of the now very well-known monkey-faced 

 appearance of the nut when deprived of its thick enveloping husk, 

 applied to it the Portuguese (and Spanish) word coco, which means 

 " a grin," " a grimace," or a " face " (as in the phrase " he made a 



