SC - Excellent Small Cakes, Digby

[Huette von Ahrens]

Was written:

Coconuts in the New World occurred only on
>the Pacific coast having been carried there by winds and currents and not
>yet having been domesticated.


Odd historical note regards Palm Beach, Florida.  Legend has it called so
because coconut palms grew there.  Legend says that a cargo vessel with
coconuts aboard sank off shore and the coconuts were washed ashore and grew.
This occurred in either the late 16th or 17th century if I remember
correctly what I read.  Coconuts were apparently available in Colonial
America by the way.

Rosengarten writes regards the coconuts origin that it clearly orginated in
the Pacific Ocean but that there are two theories; an Old World and a New
World one.  It is apparently clear, according to him, that it was well
established on the Pacific coast of Panama before the first Spanish
explorers got there.  Paleobotanical evidence of fossil coconuts from the
late Tertiary exists in New Zealand.  The strongest theory in his estimation
postulates a western Pacific or eastern  Indian Ocean origin with a gradual
east and west spread either naturally via ocean currents or by man.  Vasco
da Gama in 1498 found it in Mozambique in East Africa.  According to
Rosegarten, "It is generally agreed that the coconut was not found in the
Atlantic Ocean basin until the Portuguese brought it there after 1500, when
they introduced the palm to West Africa and Brazil.  In the early sixteenth
century the Spanish carried it to the Caribbean."  He further states that it
was rapidly spread throughout the Caribbean and South America.

Daniel Raoul