These different varieties are strongly marked, and maintain their characters when reproduced from seed.
[1] The cocoanut palm has been reared as far north as Indian River, Florida, latitude 28° N., but has not proven a profitable commercial venture.
Uses.
The cocoanut furnishes two distinct commercial products—the dried meat of the nut, or copra, and the outer fibrous husk. These products are so dissimilar that they should be considered separately.
Copra and Cocoanut Oil.
Until very recent years the demand for the “meat” of the cocoanut or its products was limited to the uses of soap boilers and confectioners. Probably there is no other plant in the vegetable kingdom which serves so many and so varied purposes in the domestic economy of the peoples in whose countries it grows. Within the past decade chemical science has produced from the cocoanut a series of food products whose manufacture has revolutionized industry and placed the business of the manufacturer and of the producer upon a plane of prosperity never before enjoyed.
There has also been a great advance in the processes by which the new oil derivatives are manufactured. The United States took the initiative with the first recorded commercial factories in 1895. In 1897 the Germans established factories in Mannheim, but it remained for the French people to bring the industry to its present perfection.