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Cocos nucifera
Name - Commonly called Coconut palm. "Cocos" comes from
the Portuguese word for monkey, an allusion to the pores or eyes of a coconut
which are said to resemble a monkey's face and "nucifera" means "nut
bearing"Description - This palm has rather sparse foliage
which grows out of a half-visible coconut. The leaves are long and grouped two
to a frond, appearing to grow straight from the nut. As the plant develops, lower
fronds die and new ones grow from the top of the central stem, in time producing
a trunk. It is a slow grower. Family - PalmaeOrigin
- Not known for sure, but probably the Pacific basin. Coconuts can float in the
oceans for months, washing up on a beach and germinating.Care Tips
- Coconut palm needs full sunlight. In winter temperature should be minimum 18
°C and in summer it tolerates up to 27 °C. Keep just moist, watering once
or twice a week in summer, once a week in winter, but do not get water on the
nut. Humidity should be high. Stand pot in saucer of pebbles almost covered with
water and mist the plant daily. Coconut palm needs feeding every 3 weeks in summer
with houseplant food diluted with water. This interesting plant is unfortunately
invariably short-lived, as it requires tropical greenhouse conditions to survive
in the long term.Trivia - One of the world's most useful plants,
the coconut palm has hundreds of uses and is the staple diet of many people in
the tropics. Apart from the obvious use of the flesh as food, the coconut water
with which the nut is filled provides a refreshing drink. However, the most important
use of this intensively farmed tree is the dried flesh, which is exported by the
millions of tons, and is used in the production of commercial oils for food, toiletries
etc.
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