: SC - Coconuts in Period

[Susan Fox-Davis]

Great!  Now we need to document pineapple and rum so we can serve Mai Tai's next
war!

Where was that rock again?

Selene

Daniel Phelps wrote:

> 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
>
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