Coconut palm

The tree that sailed across the seas

A coconut is a seed that floats across the sea! It drifts in the ocean for months, reaches another island and sprouts there. That's why the palm grows on every warm coast in the world. Inside one coconut is a litre of clean drinking water. The palm is called the 'tree of life' — people make 100 different things from it.

The coconut palm (Cocos nucifera) grows on tropical coasts up to 30 m. Its fruit (botanically a drupe) floats for up to 110 days thanks to its fibrous husk, spreading up to 5,000 km — which is how it colonised the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. A young coconut holds liquid endosperm (coconut water), sterile and rich in electrolytes. A palm yields up to 75 fruits a year. It is the 'tree of life': water, oil, milk, fibre (coir), leaves for roofing, trunk for timber. Strictly speaking, a palm is not a tree but a woody monocot with no annual rings. It has been cultivated in Asia for 3,000 years; Indonesia, the Philippines and India are the main producers.

Fun facts

• A coconut can float for 110 days and travel 5,000 km across the ocean.
• Coconut water is so pure that in wartime it was used for intravenous drips.
• A palm isn't really a tree — it's a giant grass (like bamboo).