Coconut: A Fruit, a nut or a Seed?

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Coconut: A Fruit, a Nut or a Seed?

By Kasma Loha-unchit
Text Copyright © 1995 Kasma Loha-unchit.

Also Available: Links to information on this site about the coconut | includes: Coconuts as an Ingredient | Coconuts in Thailand | How to Crack a Coconut

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Coconut - Sprouting Though its name suggests that it is a nut, I've always regarded coconut as a fruit. When the coconut is young, it has properties like fruit, and as it matures, it becomes more nutty. But in fact it is not a nut or a fruit; it is a seed.

Unless it is picked, a matured coconut eventually drops from the tree. The fully developed hard shell does not crack easily. Dry and brown, the coconut may sit underneath the tree for months and appear as if it were dead, until one day a green shoot pushes its way out of the shell. The whole time the old coconut has been sitting under the tree, changes have been slowly taking place inside. At one end of the coconut (where the eyes are), an embryo starts growing, feeding off the juice and nutrition of the thick white flesh. This embryo develops into a creamy mass that gradually fills much of the empty space inside. It is good to eat – sweet, somewhat spongy and less fibrous than the matured meat.

The embryo eventually sprouts out of the shell and becomes a young coconut seedling. At this point, the plant can survive for several more weeks or months on the food and water inside as roots gradually develop and extend out of the shell to anchor the plant in the ground. Nutritious coconut meat can sustain life for a long time; one of my students, who is a horticulturist, has successfully used coconut milk to nurse seedlings of Coconut other plants in his greenhouse. Coconut palms lead a long productive life. They begin bearing fruits at the age of five to seven years and continue to do so until they are seventy to eighty years old.

As complete seed packages, coconuts have been known to travel to faraway lands to find new homesteads. Stories abound of coconuts floating their way across seas and oceans to be washed ashore on distant islands, rooting themselves in handsome groves to greet visiting humans in search of paradise. The dehusked coconuts you buy at the supermarket, however, are no longer productive seed packages. Once the husk is removed, the seed dies.

Also Available: Links to Information on this site about the coconut | includes: Coconuts as an Ingredient | Coconuts in Thailand | How to Crack a Coconut

Options: Index of articles | Thai recipes | Cooking classes | Thai cookbooks | Return to top | Contact Kasma

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Text Copyright © 1995 Kasma Loha-unchit in It Rains Fishes. All rights reserved.
Drawings Copyright © 1995 Margaret DeJong. All rights reserved.
All material on this website is Copyright © 1995 to 2008 Kasma Loha-unchit. All rights reserved.
For comments, feedback or questions, contact Kasma.
Page added 29 May 2005. Last updated 20 April 2007.