A recent report in the open access journal PLOS One this week presented results of a study of coconut genetics, revealing some new information about the domestication and dispersal of coconuts.
Previously, scholars believed that dwarf coconut palm trees (those which "only" grow 25-32 feet tall) were domesticated from the tall coconut palms (65-100 feet), but it's quite a bit more complicated than that. It turns out that coconuts were domesticated twice, once in southeast Asia and once in India, and they were dispersed throughout the world by at least three separate cultural groups, the earliest of which were colonizing Polynesia over 3,000 years ago.
Read the details in Coconut Domestication (a photo essay)
Gunn BF, Baudouin L, and Olsen KM. 2011. Independent Origins of Cultivated Coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) in the Old World Tropics. PLoS ONE 6(6):e21143. (open access)
Comments
I can’t believe I wrote something on Coconuts and didn’t refer once to Margaret Dumont.
Well, to be fair, Margaret Dumont was in The CocoAnuts.
Ahhh, put the lime in the coconut make you feel better. From a South Florida native who desperately misses her coconuts up here in North Fl, thank you for an interesting article! Brought real history to a tree most people swear at! Also enlarged my education.