Page:The coco palm by Dahlgren, B. E. (Bror Eric).djvu/10

2 up to 5,000 feet but above 1,500 to 2,000 feet, it fails to flourish.

To the traveler its tall cylindrical trunk, slightly curved near the base, often sixty to eighty or more feet in height, seems to impart as nothing else a tropical character to the landscape. Few tropical trees can surpass it in utility. In some of the regions where it grows it supplies to the inhabitants almost all the necessaries of life.

The coco palm differs so greatly from any of the trees of our temperate zone that its habit of growth and its manner of flowering and fruiting are of considerable interest. It is always produced from seed. For this purpose the mature coconuts are set out to sprout in beds on the ground, ordinarily under partial shade. The East Indian hangs them in baskets or ties them to poles or to the limbs of a tree. They are never embedded entirely in the soil till ready to plant, which is in about a year, when the roots have penetrated the husk and the first leaves have appeared. The young plants are then set out some fifteen to twenty-five feet apart. During the early years of its life the coco palm does not differ greatly in general appearance from several of our small hot-house palms. Leaves of moderate size arise from near the ground and for some time there is scarcely any visible promise of the future lofty trunk. The first leaves are entire as they appear, and do not, like the later ones, split immediately into the characteristic feathery laminae. It is only after the first few dozen leaves have been shed and the cylindrical, woody stem becomes visible that the plant begins to acquire its characteristic aspect, which is complete when flowering commences in about the sixth to eighth year. The coco palm matures in twenty to forty years and continues to bear almost continuously for sixty to eighty years longer.