COCONUT: How The Shy Fruit Shaped Our World

Sex and mutiny is the first chapter which begins "To botanists, the coconut palm is the Cocos nucifera, a member of the Aceraceae or Palm family." Writings in Sanskrit refer to coconut oil as being used in a medicine 3500 years ago. Coconuts appear again in the Hindu epic story the Ramayana 1000 years later and the Arabic folk tales of 1001 Nights include the seven voyages of Sinbad the sailor whose crew threw stones at monkeys who retaliated by throwing down coconuts, which the sailors probably sold to finance their next voyage! In the Song of Solomon, the last section of the Hebrew Bible likened the woman's body to the coconut palm. Seafaring Arab traders likely carried coconuts from India to East Africa as long as 2000 years ago. The rarity value of the coconut was soon to pass. Today supermarket shelves, health food shops and beauty salons are crowded with coconut products, but we look here beyond the oils and healthy drinks to uncover the unexpected and often surprising vital roles that the coconut palm has played. They have been used as part of the charcoal filters in First World War gas masks and it was coconuts that triggered the mutiny on the Bounty and coconuts that saved the life of the man who went on to become the 35th President of the United States. The coconut has long been the unseen player in the endeavours of industrialists and bomb makers, physicians and silversmiths, smugglers and snake charmers. 224 pages, illustrations and colour plates.