Cocoanut

the well known nut of a palm tree. The natural home of the cocoanut palm is on the shores of the low tropical islands of the Pacific. It is an important tree in Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, the Philippines, and Hawaii. The trunk of the tree is a foot or two in diameter. It rises straight and trim, carrying a crown or tuft of leaves at a height of seventy-five to one hundred feet. The leaves wave gracefully like plumes. Many are from ten to twenty feet in length and are used by the natives to thatch their huts. The nuts hang at the bases of the leaves in clusters of ten or fifteen. Several clusters may be expected to ripen during the year. A Jamaica tree yields 100 nuts a year. Cocoanut trees follow the coast in a fringe, and plant themselves naturally. Nuts fall from overhanging trees into the sea and are carried like boats along the coast and cast up to take root anywhere. A tree matures in seven or eight years and bears during the lifetime of a person. Cocoanuts are pretty well known all over the world. The fresh milk is a fit article of food. Dried cocoanut meat or copra, is an article of commerce from which seventy per cent of its own weight of cocoanut oil is extracted. Thirty ordinary nuts will yield a gallon of oil. It is used extensively to make stearine candles and soap. Like that of other palms, the sap of the cocoanut tree yields a sweet wine called toddy by the Hindus. On undergoing fermentation and distillation, sweet toddy yields arrack, as the Arabians call it, the alcoholic liquor of the tropics.

The cocoanut tree is put to many uses by the natives. The husk of the nut is surrounded by a fiber called coir, from which paper, twine, ropes, matting, doormats, mattresses, brooms, and brushes are made. The shell is used for ladles and cups. When burnt, it produces an excellent lampblack. Cocoanut charcoal is excellent as a powder for the teeth. The young leaves of the trees are eaten like cabbage. Cloth, hats, bonnets, fans, baskets, bedding, thatch, and fish nets are made of the leaves. The trunk is used for canoes, posts, rafters, and fences. The ribs of the leaves are used for paddles, spears, arrows, and torches. In fact, the uses to which the cocoanut palm may be put rival those of the bamboo in variety and number. Cocoanuts ripen and fall the year around. Average cocoanuts are worth about twenty dollars a thousand in New York, London, and other prominent seaports. American imports of cocoanuts and cocoanut products for the year 1908 were $2,000,000.

See Cocoa