Coconut Importance 

The coconut is the most extensively grown and used nut in the world and the most important palm.The coconut palm rates higher than the family cow to one third of the world's population. In the tropical countries, the coconut tree is intertwined with life itself, from the food they eat to the beverages they drink. Household utensils, baskets, cooking oil, furniture, and cosmetics all come from the coconut tree.

Philippines people rely on the coconut palm for survival and refer to it as the "tree of life." The Indonesians say, "There are as many uses for the coconut as there are days in the year."

It is an important commercial crop in many tropical countries, contributing significantly to their economies. The chief product is copra, the source of coconut oil used for making soap, cooking oils and margarine. Much of the fruit is consumed locally for food. The coconut palm more than any other plant, gives a tropical effect to the Florida landscape.In Florida it is successfully grown from Palm Beach on the east coast and Fort Myers on the west coast, south to Key West. It is highly valued as an ornamental but its fruit is of limited commercial importance in Florida.

In World War II, a scout who found the shipwrecked John F. Kennedy and the crew of his PT-109, taught Kennedy how to write a resque message on a husked coconut shell. This coconut was later kept on the president's desk, and is now in the John F. Kennedy Library.

Coconut Uses

There are hundreds of uses for coconutsand their products. Man can use every part of the coconut. The white nut-meat of one coconut has as much protein as four ounces of beefsteak.  The meat of immature coconuts can be eaten with a spoon or be scooped out andmade into ice cream. Coconut milk, abundant inunripe nuts, is a refreshing and nutritious drink. The meat in mature coconuts is firm and can be eaten fresh or may be used for making shredded coconut.The most important economic product is obtained by drying the meat into copra which is pressed to produce coconut oil, primarily used in making soap. Coconut oil is also used for cooking and making margarine. The husk fiber is combed out and sold as coir, a material for making rope and coconut matting. The trunks may be used for building timbers and the leaves used for house thatching. The coconut palm has little commercial importance in Florida but is highly valued as an ornamental. It gives a tropical effect to the Florida landscape.

Coconuts As Potential Biofuel Source

impoverished Pacific island nations looking to coconuts to combat soaring world oil prices and cut severe balance of payment deficits by using coconut oil to make biofuel.   READ on .......

Coconut Harvesting

Harvesting is done throughout the year. The time from fruit set to full maturity is about 12  months. (Botanically, a coconut is a simple dry fruit known as a  fibrous drupe, not a true nut. The husk is  composed of fibres called coir and there is an inner "stone",  the endocarp.) The fruit should be harvested fully ripe for copra and dehydrated coconut. Drinking nuts should be picked earlier, at about 7 months. The nuts may be harvested by skilled climbers or may be cut from the ground, using a knife attached to a long pole.

Falling Coconuts

A falling coconut is dangerous when the nut is still green and the husk is very hard, but green nuts rarely fall, except when they have been attacked by disease (moulds, etc.) By the time the nut naturally falls, the husk has become brown, the coir has become dryer and softer, and the nut is less likely to cause damage when it drops. Still, there have been instances of coconuts falling from palms and injuring people, and claims of some fatalities. Falling coconut deaths are often used as a comparison to shark attacks, making the claim that it is more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than by a shark. There is no evidence of people being killed in this manner. There is a story in which a concubine of a King Tetui, was killed by a falling, green nut. The offending palm was immediately cut down. This was around 1777, the time of Captain Cook's visit.

Coconuts Special Roles

The coconut was used for money in the Nicobar Islands, north of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean, until 1900. Pieces of coconut shell carved into coin-like spheres served as money in the South Pacific.

In Northern India, coconuts were valued as fertility symbols. When a woman wanted to conceive, she would go to a priest to receive her special coconut.

In Bali, women are forbidden to even touch the coconut tree. Because females and coconut trees both share the ability to reproduce, men fear that a woman's touch may drain the fertility of the coconut tree into her own fertility.

The first solid food eaten by a Thai baby is three spoonfuls of the custard-like flesh of young coconut fed to him or her by a Buddhist priest.

Samoans believe that a coconut lying on the ground is not free for the taking but that it belongs to someone who knows it is there. If you should claim the taboo coconut when no one is looking, the tapui, a magical spirit, will taunt you. This unseen force may strike you by lightening or punish you with a painful, incurable illness.

Natives of New Guinea have their own version of the coconut's origins. They believed that when the first man died on the island, a coconut palm sprouted from his head.

Coconuts are used in Hindu religious rites. Coconuts may be offered to the gods, and a coconut is smashed on the ground or on some object as part of an initiation or inauguration of building projects, or a new boat. This signifies sacrificing ego, that wealth stems from divinity, and if due credit is not given, bad karma is taken on.

From past centuries to the present, the nuts are considered survival food, sustaining communities after major tropical storms destroy the rice paddies or cornfields. Before 1950, about 60 percent of the coconuts were shipped to the United States to be shredded and dried. After that time the coconut producing countries hipped the coconut meat already grated and dried.

Coconuts come to market in two major stages of maturity. Young coconuts are prized for their sweet, revitalizing juice. The meat of the young coconut, which is very thin, soft, and delicately sweet, is gaining interest among innovative raw foodists who turn it into imitation noodles and other delicacies.

The mature coconut is valued for its thick, firm meat used world wide in shredded or grated form, often for baked goods. Coconut in its mature stage has a rich, nutty flavor and chewy texture with a higher oil content than young coconut. Coconut milk, coconut cream, and coconut oil all come from mature coconuts.

From fertility taboos to unseen magical forces, fascinating folklore practices revolving around the coconut have evolved throughout the tropical regions.