HEALTHY FRUIT COCONUT
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many societies that use it. One of the
earliest mentions of the coconut dates back to the One Thousand and One Nights
story of Sinbad the Sailor; he is known to have bought and sold coconuts during
his fifth voyage. Tenga, its Malayalam and Tamil name, was used in the detailed
description of coconut found in Itinerario by Ludovico di Varthema published in
1510 and also in the later Hortus Indicus Malabaricus. Both names translate to
"Indian nut". In the earliest description of the coconut palm known,
given by Cosmos of Alexandria in his Topographia Christiana written about 545
AD, there is a reference to the argell tree and its drupe.
Historical evidence
favors the European origin of the name "coconut", for no name is
similar in any of the languages of India, where the Portuguese first found the
fruit; and indeed Barbosa, Barros, and Garcia, in mentioning the
Tamil/Malayalam name tenga, and Canarese narle, expressly say, "we call
these fruits quoquos", "our people have given it the name of
coco", and "that which we call coco, and the Malabars temga".
The coconut has
spread across much of the tropics, probably aided in many cases by seafaring
people. Coconut fruit in the wild are light, buoyant and highly water
resistant, and evolved to disperse significant distances via marine currents.
Specimens have been collected from the sea as far north as Norway. In the
Hawaiian Islands, the coconut is regarded as a Polynesian introduction, first
brought to the islands by early Polynesian voyagers from their homelands in Oceania.
They have been found in the Caribbean and the Atlantic coasts of Africa and
South America for less than 500 years, but evidence of their presence on the
Pacific coast of South America predates Christopher Columbus's arrival in the
Americas. They are now almost ubiquitous between 26°N and 26°S except for the
interiors of Africa and South America.
The origin of the
plant is the subject of debate. O.F. Cook was one of the earliest modern
researchers to draw conclusions about the location of origin of Cocos nucifera
based on its current-day worldwide distribution. He hypothesized that the
coconut originated in the Americas, based on his belief that American coconut
populations predated European contact and because he considered pan-tropical
distribution by ocean currents improbable. Thor Heyerdahl later used this
hypothesis of the American origin of the coconut to support his theory that the
Pacific Islanders originated in South America. However, more evidence exists
for an Indo-Pacific origin either around Melanesia and Malesia or the Indian
Ocean.
The oldest fossils known of the modern coconut dating from the Eocene
period from around 37 to 55 million years ago were found in Australia and
India. However, older palm fossils such as some of nipa fruit have been found
in the Americas. Since 1978, the work on
tracing the probable origin and dispersal of Cocos nucifera has only recently been augmented by a
publication on the germination rate of the coconut seednut and another on the importance of the coral
atoll ecosystem. Briefly, the coconut originated in the coral atoll ecosystem —
without human intervention — and required a thick husk and slow germination to
survive and disperse.
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