To this day the origin of the cocoanut is unknown. De Candolle (Origin of Cult. Plants, p. 574) recites twelve specific claims pointing to an Asiatic origin, and a single, but from a scientific standpoint almost unanswerable, contention for an American derivation. None of the remaining nineteen species of the genus Cocos are known to exist elsewhere in the world than on the American continent. His review of the story results in the nature of a compromise, assigning to our own Islands and those to the south and west of us the distinction of having first given birth to the cocoanut, and that thence it was disseminated east and west by ocean currents.
[1] “The Prince of Palms,” Treloar.
Botany.
The cocoanut (Cocos nucifera Linn.) is the sole oriental representative of a tropical genus comprising nineteen species, restricted, with this single exception, to the New World.
Its geographical distribution is closely confined to the two Tropics.[1]
Not less than nineteen varieties of C. nucifera are described by Miquel and Rumphius, and all are accepted by Filipino authors.
Whether all of these varieties are constant enough to deserve recognition need not be considered here. Many are characterized by the fruits being distinctly globular, others by fruits of a much prolonged oval form, still others by having the lower end of the fruit terminating in a triangular point.
In the Visayas there is a variety in which the fibrous outer husk of the nut is sweet and watery, instead of dry and astringent, and is chewed by the natives like sugar cane. Another variety occurs in Luzon, known as “Pamocol,” the fruit of which seldom exceeds 20 cm. in diameter. There is also a dwarf variety of the palm, which rarely exceeds 3 meters in height, and is known to the Tagalogs as “Adiavan.”