History of the coconut.

History of the coconut.

Did you know that just one coconut can be the beginning of an entire island?

Coconut palms grow on the isolated island as well as the mainland because coconuts can drift across the sea for thousands of kilometers without losing their potential to germinate. Whether they come ashore on a sandbank, a flat atoll or a coral island at the end of their long journey, any little bit of land they do find will provide enough space for them to germinate. As the seedling grows, more and more seed and solid material are deposited around it and so, over time, a small island can form. Because coconut can spend more time drifting at sea without being damaged, it is very difficult to determine where the first coconut came from. 

What is the juice in a coconut?

Coconut juice, or coconut water to be more precise, is liquid food for the coconut tree seedling. The sweet, almost transparent liquid is full of nutrients, containing oil, sugar, water, vitamins, and minerals, including potassium, phosphorus, and selenium. As the fruit ripens, the hard coconut flesh absorbs the water. As a rule, it is true to say that the riper the fruit is the less water it will contain. Coconut water is sterile and can, therefore, be used in an emergency as a substitute for serum and injected directly into a vein in cases where there has been major blood loss.

What does a coconut really look like?

Coconuts are in fact green. They are wrapped in a thick, fibrous layer with a fine green outer skin, all of which is removed as soon as the fruit is harvested in order to save bulk and weight. what remains is the actual coconut seed, which - from a botanist's perspective - isn't a nut at all, but a stone fruit like the cherry, with a skin and a stone. When people speak of green coconut they mean the six- to seven-month-old, unripe coconuts that are harvested before the hard kernel forms. At this stage, the fruit is at its most nutritious. It holds around half a liter of clear coconut water and its flesh is still soft enough to be eaten with a spoon. The coconut milk commonly found on grocery store shelves and used in Asian cooking is simply water that has been pressed out of a soaked and pureed dried coconut. 

              The world's largest seed, which can reach 30 cm in length and 18 kg in weight, is shaped like a double coconut but not directly related to the true coconut. It comes from the coco-de-mer palm that grows naturally only in Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.