326 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



it differs in general appearance from other palms. Briefly, the really 

 telling differences are to be found chiefly in the form of the trunk, 

 in the curve of the midrib of the leaf, in the way in which the leaflets 

 are set on the midrib, and in the curve of these leaflets. 



I cannot better sum up the characteristic appearance of the 

 coco-nut palm than in the words of Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, 

 written many years ago (1853), after his travels with Bates on the 

 Amazon. In his book on " The Palms of the Amazon " (in which, by 

 the way, the verbal descriptions are, to my mind, much better than 

 from an artistic point of view are the drawings) he wrote of the coco-nut 

 palm: "The leaves are large, terminal, and regularly pinnate. The 

 leaflets are rigid, and spread out very flat on each side of the midrib. 

 ... Its peculiar characteristic is the rigidity of its leaves, which curve 

 or droop very slightly, and the leaflets spread out with remarkable 

 flatness and rigidity . . . the whole tree has not that light and feathery 

 appearance which it is often represented as possessing." 



The normal appearance of this palm, in its adult state, is as in figure 

 129 taken on the beach in Fanning Island, a lonely little coral atoll 

 far away in the north central Pacific. 



Abnormal growth seems to be rare in palms generally, and, if I 

 may judge from my own rather wide experience, is perhaps especially 

 rare in the coco-nut. I have, however, come across a few very curious 

 variations, of which I can show you the following pictures. The first 

 is of a tree growing in the garden of Government House in Fiji (fig. 125). 

 In this the peculiarity will at once be noticed that the leaflets separate 

 very imperfectly from each other and from the midrib. The natives 

 declare that it is a different kind of coco-nut — by which they certainly 

 mean that it is, in their opinion, a distinct and fixed species. For 

 myself, I am uncertain about this ; I am assured that the variety 

 reproduces itself truly from seed, but, on the other hand, the manner 

 of growth is suspiciously like that which, for instance in the Solomon 

 Island plantations, is known to be produced by the attack of a beetle. 



Before I went into the Pacific I had never seen — I doubt if I had 

 ever heard of — a coco-nut tree with anything but a straight and simple 

 stem. But in Fiji I have seen trees with branched stems, doubtless 

 as the result of injury. I am able to show you the picture of one 

 which has divided into three (fig. 126), and of another divided into seven 

 (fig. 127). 



The ordinarily single stem of the coco-nut is — unlike those of most 

 other tall-growing palms — rarely quite straight ; but very occasionally, 

 of course as the result of abnormal conditions, it assumes extraordinarily 

 twisted forms. 



The fruit of the coco-nut, at any rate in its adult and transported 

 state, is too well known to need any description here. Here in England 

 it is generally seen deprived of its thick fibrous covering. 



The flower-spike, wrapped in its hard woody sheath, starts from 

 the top of the trunk, just where the lower leaves, i.e. the oldest, leaves 

 start. The flower-spike is originally erect, or almost so, but when the 



