Monkey Face

Opinion is sharply divided on where the coconut originated, though the bulk of the evidence favors Southeast Asia and especially India. Because the coconut seems to have quite a few close relations in Central America, especially in the region of Panama, some cite the New World as its place of origin. But then there are also ancestors/relations in Africa and New Zealand, so it’s really hard to know.

What is known for sure is that the coconut does extremely well in the tropics due to all the humidity, and very poorly everywhere else, which is why it grows nowhere in Asia west of India and nowhere north of the Philippines. But that leaves quite a heck of a lot of territory, and with the help of early traders and explorers, notably the Arabs and the Portuguese, the coconut has managed to exploit just about every available land mass, including Central America, the Caribbean and West and East Africa.

It was in fact the Portuguese who named the coconut, “coco” being sailor slang for “monkey face”, owing to the three holes (actually germination pores) on its surface.