A Bunch of Coconuts

To most of us who are unfamiliar with the natural world of the tropics, coconuts are the small brown hard hairy things that you very rarely buy in the supermarket, or maybe have tried once in a blue moon to hit on a coconut shy at the fair. A song springs to mind:

I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts
There they are, all standing in a row
Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head
Give them a twist a flick of the wrist
That’s what the showman said.
I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts
Every ball you throw will make me rich
There stands my wife, the idol of me life
Singing roll a bowl a ball a penny a pitch …..
etc.

Fred Heatherton

The reality, of course, is that the fruits of the Coconut Palm (Cocos nucifera) look very different at the point of origin, as I found out on a visit to the north Queensland palm-fringed tropical coast some years back. They do come in all sizes in their own wrapper – including a smooth outer shell, which varies from yellow, to green, to brown, according to age.

The thick fibrous layer between the outer cover and the nut itself helps the coconuts to disperse by allowing them to float and travel long distances at sea. I found coconuts on the beach with stalked or goose barnacles attached – indicating that they had been in the water for some time before washing ashore again.

Other coconuts lying on the sand have strange characteristic holes in them, gnawed by the nocturnal White-tailed Rat (Uromys caudimaculatus) that chews right through all the hard layers to get to the white flesh inside. And coconuts are still in great demand as the basis for exotic beach-side cocktails even in far-away and isolated places, as evidenced by a barrow-load of them in the shade near a bistro hidden among the trees at Cape Tribulation.