Subject: Coconut varieties

From: [email-masked] (Allison Proctor)
Date: Sun, 01 Oct 1995 08:45:29 GMT

I recently saw a documentary that took place in the Caribbean.  A
large fruit (maybe as big as someone's head?) that looked very heavy,
smooth and green was chopped from a tree, cut open, and a clear liquid
was poured into a glass. There was something dark inside the fruit,
but I couldn't tell what it was.  The fruit was irregularly shaped,
but generally round. Someone told me that this was a variety of
coconut, but I never saw a green coconut. Does anyone know if there is
more than one type of coconut? What kind of fruit would this have been
if it wasn't a coconut?

Allison

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From: [email-masked] (Edward K. Gilding)
Date: Tue, 03 Oct 95 18:25:49 PST

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] says...
>more than one type of coconut? What kind of fruit would this have been
That sounds like a coconut to me, coconuts are part of the palm family 
with dates, betel nut palm and raphis palms.  The fruit in this family 
usually consists of a fiberous, dryish and thin fleshed covering over a 
hard seed.  Coconut plants have the largest seed in the plant family, and 
one of the most widespread and useful plants.  The fruit is greenish(or 
orangey yellow if it was exposed to alot of sun) and is usually three 
sided.  The "coconut" is a large brown fiber covered seed in the center. 
The seed is extremely hard and has a thin layer of white meat (coconut 
meat) about 1/4"-1/2" thick,  inside is a small amount of liquid "coconut 
milk" or"juice".  The milk you buy in the store has some of the coconut 
meat puree mixed in. 

There are two main types of coconut, one is tall growing and rather thin 
trunked.  This variety is suspectible to some blight or something that 
kills them.  A second variety, which I believe is called "Samoan" that is 
resilient to that disease and stays much shorter than the afore mentioned 
variety(and thus it doesn't need to be de-nutted, the taller growing one 
is actually a health hazard as the falling nuts can seriously injure 
people beneath the tree).

They are pretty much the same.  There is another that is just a form of 
one of the above, it is extremely RARE.  Its varigated(It can bee seen in 
someones front yard on the isle of Oahu on the windward coast.)