Contribution to a natural and economical history of the coco-nut tree / by Henry Marshall.

  • Marshall, Henry, 1775-1851.
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contribution to a natural and economical history of the coco-nut tree / by Henry Marshall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    TO A NATURAL AND ECONOMICAL HISTORY OF THE COCO TREE, OR AS IT IS COMMONLY CALLED THE COCO-NUT TREE. The earliest notice of the Coco Tree which the author has seen is contained in an account of the travels of two Mahommedans in In- dia and China in the ninth century, and a commentary on the work by Abu Zeid. Numerous descriptions of the tree and its products, more or less copious, have since that period been published, but in general the authors have devoted their attention principally to the natural history of the tree, and have given a less comprehensive account of its products, as articles of commerce, than they seem to deserve. With the exception of a paper in the Transactions of the Werneriau Natural History Society, the only monograph description of the coco-nut tree, with which the author is acquainted, is very brief in regard to the uses of the tree, although it was published so late as 1831. In the following pages, the author has endeavoured to give a com- prehensive account of the tree and its products; and has briefly de- tailed the more important facts which have been published on the subject, together with the result of his own observations during a residence of a number of years in Ceylon. Description, &c. The coco tree ( Cocos rawc(/em) belongs to the Class Monoscia, Or- der Hexandria, of the Linnean classification of plants. Natural Or- der, Palmje. Roots slender and flexible, they rise separately like fingers from the stem, and do not penetrate to great depth in the soil. Stem cylindrical, erect, but frequently leans to one side, crowned with a bunch of about 12 or 14 fronds, (palm leaves,) from 1 to 2 feet in diameter, and from 60 to 100 feet in height, covered with a dun-coloured coriaceous substance resembling bark. ''I'he dia- meter of the stem is increased by the addition of fibrous bundles to the centre, which being newly formed is the softest, and the outside the hardest; the consolidating process goes on in some trees till the outside becomes so hard as to resist the blow of a hatchet. Small roots project from the stem for about two feet from the earth by