Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1891-08-14
HOW COCOANUTS @
THEY ARE PLANTED IN HOLES AND
BEAR IN FIVE YEARS.

A Tree That Requires but Little Care
and Which Lives and Produces Fruit
for More Than Fifty Years-Peculiari-
ties of the Fruit and Its Culture.
Although the true and original home of
the cocoanut is India and the South Sea
islands, it has become so widely diffused
by the hands of man and the waves of the
ocean that it is now a prominent feature
in almost every tropical portion of the
globe, covering between 1900, 900 and 4, OOO,-
900 acres with its beautiful palms., and
numbering $50, 0O0,O 900 trees, yielding an
nually 0,000, 900, 900 of ~cocoanuts.
A recent approximate estimate of the
area cultivated with the %cocoanut palm
gave the following result: British India
and dependencies, 800, 900; Central Ameri-
ca, 100000; Ceylon, 800, 900; Eastern Archi-
pelago and colonies, $4,000; Java and Su-
matra, 100000; Mauritius, Madagascar,
Seychelles and African coast, 100, 600; Pa
ci6c islands, including Fiji, New Caledonia
etc., $4,000; Siam and Cochin China, 1OO,-
600, and West Indies, 5000.
And when Florida shall add her 10, 900
acres lying south of the twenty-seventh
parallel of north latitude, capable of grow
Ing 100000 trees, we may see at no dis
tant day the North America cocoanut de-
manding no mean share of commercial at
tention.
IN FLORIDA.
For many years %cocoanuts have grown on
the coast of southern Florida, but owing to
an extreme fondness for the green nuts
manifested by those engaged in the sponge
fishing along the coast, few nuts
have been allowed to ripen, only
sufficient to demonstrate that cocoa
nuts can be raised for several hundred
miles along the coast Of Florida,
where the Gulf Stream flows so close to the
shore. The cocoanut industry in that vi
entity has received an impetus of late.
Several northern capitalists have gone to
Florida and embarked in this industry.
seeing Qike Colonel Sellers) millions in it.
Within the past four years over 800, 600
nuts were planted on the coast of Florida,
Such nuts as are wanted for planting are
gathered into heaps or placed under sheds,
where they are allowed to remain until the
sprout shows itself through the husk.
When planted in regular order holes about
three feet deep and from fifteen to thirty
feet apart are dug. In the hole the nut is
placed with care and covered with about
one foot of soil. The hole is filled gradually
as the sprOut grows until it reaches the
surface, when it is left to itself, recurring
no further attention.
Should the place where the c%ocoanut is
planted be any great distance from the sea-
shore a quantity of salt is sometimes placed
in the hole, and sometimes scraps of old
iron, as, being strictly a salt water loving
tree, it will thrive but a short distance
from the s%eashore, nearness to salt water
being absolutely essential to it's welfare.
In fact, it is said no magnet is truer to the
pole than is the roots of the c%ocoanut tree
to the ocean; for when the root breaks
through the husk it points directly toward
the sea, no matter in what position the nut
is placed in the ground.
H YOUNG sPROUT.
Boring its way downward the root fas-
tens itself so deep and firmly in the ground
that no tornado, no matter how severe, has
ever been known to wrench it from its
m%oorings; but the hurricanes so frequent
in the tropics will often twist the trunks
and carry the broken portions a long dis
lance, thus ending that c%ocoanut palm, as
it will not sprout a second time.
Could you examine a c%ocoanut when in
the process of sprouting you will find
directly beneath the %sprouting eye a small,
white, mushroom shaped kernel, and in
this little germ lies the life of the future
tree. Shut up in its prisonlike shell, and
the shell surrounded by many inches thick
Of tough and tangled fiber, how is it to
work its way out and perform the duty as
signed to it? For it is apparently soft and
tender as a baby's hand.
Soon its tiny fingers begin boring their
way out of the weakest eye; then, rending
the tough woody fiber right and left, it
forces itself to the surface and commences
the campaign of life, sending it's shoot up
ward to form the tree and downward to
form the roots, still clinging to its parent
for support, until the entire inside of its
shell is filled with a round, ball-like sub
stance that is formed by the CONCEALED
milk of the %cocoanut.
From it the roots fast forming receive
their staff of life until the mother coke be-
comes exhausted, and having fulfilled her
mission, is deserted by her offspring and
left a useless mass of fiber.
II MATURED TREE.
On goes the tree, sending deep into the
ground its roots and high into the air its
trunk until after a lapse of from five to
eight years it has attained a height of from
forty to sixty feet, and then pays tribute to
mother earth by bearing its first fruit, and,
under favorable circumstances, continuing
to yield for more than half a century. Civ
ing its owner from 100 to 200 marketable
nuts a year.
Through the center of the trunk of the
%cocoanut tree is a soft, fbrous heart which
furnishes the life Of the tree and acts as q
great pump in forcing to the nuts the i'm
mense quantity Of water required to fill
them. This fbrous heart has a wonderful
fltering power, for no matter in what To-
cation the tree may be growing, either upon
the beach or in the malarial swamps near
the pools of stagnant water, when nature
has done her work she deposits in the CO.
coanut a sparkling liquid as clear as crys-
tai and as cool as if drawn from the deep
est we'll in our northern yards. Having
no narticular season for fruitinp hut hoar.