With the bright sun of the tropics, which floods the May Valley of the Seychelles with its rays, this place is always twilight. In this place, it seems that he was in some kind of fabulous and mysterious world. The impression of what he saw is growing, there are pleasant aromas of cinnamon, vanilla, and the sounds of the wind and the crackle of leaves complement the fabulous picture. This is where the world's largest nut grows. Huge coconut palms form continuous tunnels, and their branches bend under the weight of the fruit to the ground. It is nothing like sea coconut, which is also called coco de mer, love nut or Seychelles nut. All these are the names of one fruit.
Plant description
Seychelles palm tree differs from other species by slow growth. In height, an adult plant reaches 30 meters. Palm grows on only two islands of the Seychelles archipelago, but this species is very famous for giving the largest nuts in the world. Their sizes are gigantic: in girth more than a meter, and weight - over 40 kilograms. The fruits are used in cooking, and the shell is used on the farm.
Seychelles palm trees are surprisingly slow growing. They gain their first ten meters by two hundred years. And the world's largest nut on a young tree appears only in the twenty-fifth year of the plant's life.
Palm tree nerds
All scholars unanimously say that Seychelles palm trees give birth to giant seeds. This unusual phenomenon can be observed in sequoia, African baobab, Lebanese cedar. However, botanists cannot understand why the plant is developing so slowly. The first sprouts appear only a year after sowing in the ground. During its life, which lasts about 810 years, the tree reaches 32 meters in height. And the world's largest nut is removed from it only in the 24th year of life.
Unlike other varieties of palm trees, trees of this species are heterosexual. After pollination of a female flower occurs, the largest nut in the world develops. Its formation takes a long time. It ripens only in the tenth year. Fresh nuts are heavy. In water, they drown and lose their ability to germinate. Because of this feature, they cannot be transported by sea waters to other shores, like nuts of other types of palm trees.
A bit of history
Back in the Middle Ages, people knew what was the largest nut in the world. In those days, tales were told about Indo-Arabian-African regions that there is an island where huge, immense nuts grow.
People did not immediately understand what kind of fruits they were talking about and which particular trees brought them. Oceans brought dead fruit to the shores of India, Java, Maldives, Sumatra. But no one knew where they came from and on which trees they grew. And then they began to say that these are the fruits of sea palms absorbed by the waters. Hence the name "sea nut".
In those days, Coco de Mer cost a lot of money. For each fruit they gave as much money as was placed in its shell. Such a price of the product was caused by the fact that all the doctors and healers of those times unanimously claimed that the fetus has unique medicinal abilities - it increases the sexuality of men, helps against poisons, epilepsy, paralysis, colic, nervous diseases.
Conclusion
Presented in the photo, the world's largest nut proves that the flora of the Earth is amazing. According to scientists, these palm trees originated in the time of the dinosaurs - about 66 million years ago. Seeds of palm trees were carried on the ground by giant lizards. When Gondwana split, this breeding method ceased to work. In the modern world, Seychelles palm trees are forced to grow in the shadow of their giant parents. Plants are fairly well understood, except for one point: scientists cannot understand how pollination occurs.