History and Origins of The Coconut Palm:

When we see images or say or hear the words 'coconut palm', a vision of tall waving trees bordering a sandy shoreline under azure blue skies tends to focus the mind. In fact, coconuts (Cocos nucifera) are found throughout the wet tropics between the latitudes 20° north and south of the Equator. Sandy shorelines and beaches present ideal growing conditions for them: a humid atmosphere, a temperature of 27-30°C, a free-draining well-aerated soil and an abundant supply of fresh groundwater.
Although wild specimens have recently been found growing in natural coastal forest in the Philippines and Australia, no-one really knows where coconut palms originated. The theory is that the coconut arose somewhere around the western Pacific basin. History suggests that It was also dispersed by ocean currents, with the seeds protected from the salt sea water by the fibrous fruit. They had reached the Americas before Columbus arrived there in 1492, and germinating coconuts were found washed up on the shores of the newly-born volcanic island, Anak Krakatoa, in the 1930s.
Coconut palms have been known and used in India for 3,000 years. A letter written by an Arab trader of the eleventh century noted that the fibre from the palm was resistant to sea water. The Arab traders also taught the population of the Sinhalese and Malabar coast how to prepare the fibre from the nut, since by this time the palm was widespread along the Indo-Malaysian coast. When Marco Polo visited China in the fourteenth century, he was told that coir fibre from the 'Indian Nut' had been used by the Chinese for 500 years. In the mid-sixteenth century the palm was introduced into Spain and Portugal, Brazil and Puerto Rico by sea-faring traders. The name 'coconut' may have been coined by Spanish sailors to describe the monkey-faced appearance of the coconut.
The list of current key coconut growing and producing countries include but is by no means limited to: Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Phillipines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Vietnam, Jamaica, Fiji,The Ivory Coast, Dahomey and Togo, West Africa and in Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania and Central and South America.

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