A tall palm tree cultivated throughout the tropics for its large, fibrous-husked nut.
The coconut palm (Cocos nucifera, family Arecaceae) is a variable, single-stemmed evergreen palm from 2 to 30 metres tall. Its unbranched trunk is up to 40 cm across, 60 cm at the base, and is topped by a rosette of leaves each 4.5 to 6 metres long. It is one of the most useful plants for people, giving a wide range of foods and other goods from its nut, husk and leaves, and it is grown, and gathered from the wild, along tropical coasts everywhere, in many named forms, as well as for ornament. It grows naturally along tropical seashores and sometimes inland on alluvial plains with a high water table.
Coconuts grow in the lowland tropics up to 26 degrees from the equator and about 1,000 metres, though most commercial planting is within 20 degrees of the equator and below 300 metres. They need a moist climate where the temperature never falls below 10°C, with 1,500 mm or more of rain a year and at least 25 mm in the driest month, and they do not tolerate drought. They grow on soils from coarse sand to clay as long as the drainage is good and the water table high, tolerate salt spray and salty soil, and grow in full sun even when small. The shape of its crown and its wide spacing make the palm well suited to small farms, and it is often intercropped with cassava, sweet potatoes, yams and bananas. Fresh nuts germinate readily at 27 to 30°C with no dormancy, sometimes while still on the palm.
Source: Useful Tropical Plants database (Fern, K.).
Coconut milk is used in Ghana to treat diarrhoea, and husk extracts are used in Nigerian folk diabetic diets; the oil is used topically for skin and fungal complaints.
The water, flesh, and pressed oil of the nut are widely consumed; the sap can be tapped and fermented into palm wine.
Grown from planted mature nuts in coastal and other warm, humid areas; begins bearing fruit after several years and continues for decades.