Coconuts - A Tropical Fruit

On our way to Guam, we had a few days of "layover" in Hawaii. Although my Dad pointed out the palms along Waikiki as being "coconut palm trees", my sister and I didn't see any "coconuts" on the trees--except for big green blobs at the crowns. Dad explained that those BLOBS were COCONUTS--just that they weren't HUSKED.

Yup--there's more to getting to drink "coconut juice" or eat "fresh coconut meat" than just climbing into a coconut tree and retrieving a coconut.

We probably saw a demonstration on "husking coconuts" when we visited the Polynesian Cultural Center during that layover, but as young kids we didn't remember that particular demonstration.

When we got to Guam, however, we had neighbors who showed us how to husk coconuts--courtesy of a handy short coconut palm and a convenient "impalement stake" embedded in their backyard.

There's a Technique to husking a coconut.

You aim the stem end of the coconut at the pointed "impalement stake" and puncture the thick husk skin. Then, with leaning on the now impaled fruit, peel the husk away from the brown, fuzzy, internal nut. NOW you have a coconut. You still have to crack the nut, however. With a little practice, you can whack the coconut with a hammer or whack it against a rock or cinderblock wall, and the coconut will split in half.

The juice (aka "coconut water") is refreshing to drink.



I've provided here a link where you can get a reproduced print of a drawing made by early explorers in the Pacific -- when they were recording all the interesting new plants they were seeing. (Get a copy of it for yourself to decorate your office, home, or den!)

When we moved into our new home on Guam, I could see a crown of a coconut palm right outside my bedroom window. It was fascinating to see the yellowish-white and waxy-looking flowers pop out of a huge carrot-shaped pod at the center of the palm's crown at the base of the fronds and how enthusiastically the "jungle bees" accumulated around the flowers.

However, six months later--when I decided to get a bit closer to investigate--I discovered that our house was on the edge of a cliff and the crown of flowers and fronds was at least 25 feet above the base of the tree.

No, it's not that I was slow to recognize that the house was next to a cliff (well, maybe I was)--it's just that the foilage was extremely thick around the side and back of our house and none of us had attempted to try to cut through it to explore. The cliff wasn't that well-defined--from about a 4-foot drop directly behind our house (lined with a thick row of bananas) the slope around the house deepened quickly to more than 20 feet on the side where my bedroom was. Also surrounding the coconut palm were some full-sized breadfruit trees, and bunches of relatively tall "tangentangen" trees. Combined, the crowns of these things hanging over the edge of the cliff toward our house gave one the impression that all this stuff was only a few feet high.

Some of our neighbors not only showed us how to de-husk the coconuts with their "impalement rod", but they showed us how to use a machete--a very handy huge knife-like tool commonly used in the islands for getting through thick underbrush, cutting up food (like chickens and roast pig and coconuts).

Other "neighbors" we had that were most proficient at opening coconuts--were the Giant Coconut Crabs that lived in the boonies behind our house.

Coconut palms are grown throughout the tropical world--and are used for food, shelter, medicine, and many other things. In the tropics, the islanders have found uses for every part of this plant.

The Plant. Cocos nucifera

As a biology major at the University of Guam, I took a semester of botany and another semester of plant biogeography, and probably learned more about coconut palms than most folks would want to learn.

Related somewhat to grass and corn--being that it is a monocot (single seed, rather than two-sided seed), coconut palms are in the palm family Arecaceae and the "tribe" of Cocoeae and are the only species in the genus Cocos. These are large palms--and they can grow to almost 100 feet tall.

I could probably tell you (based on my botany classes) that these palms have pinnate leaves (called "fronds" by us non-botanist persons) that are 4-6 meters long with pinnae 60-90 centimeters long--but all you need to do is look at a coconut palm once and you'll be able to recognize it when you see one again. The "fronds" drop off the tree cleanly--infrequently, but often enough that you shouldn't stand for long under a tall coconut palm.

Same goes for avoiding being hit by falling coconuts. You ought to see the damage that a buddy's Honda Civic took after being parked under a coconut palm on the beach for a few hours. A coconut falling from 100 feet can really put a heck of a dent in a thin metal roof.

If you don't believe me, check out these signs warning of falling coconuts--on the Go Visit Hawaii website!

And, some tropical resorts even hire Coconut Removal Engineers to keep tourists and anyone else from being zonked by falling fruit!

Have you had a good break (dodging coconuts, perhaps)?

Here's some more botanist stuff:

The flowers of a coconut palm are polygamomonoecious--which means that both male and female flowers are in the same inflorescence (flower-stalk) (no, it's not what Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke sang in "Mary Poppins"--that was supercalifragilisticmononucleosis or something like that!). The tree will flower continuously and the female flowers (when fertilized) produce the "seeds" that become what we know as COCONUTS. Even though coconut palms produce both male and female flowers on the individual trees, the trees generally cross-pollinate with only a few exceptions.