If you're thinking about bringing a coconut in your cruise ship luggage to plant in case you're somehow marooned, you may be disappointed to learn that it takes seven to eight years for a tree to grow to the point where it can produce coconuts, according to Takula. "The meat is high in healthy fats, which are very important for survival, and the juice is filled with minerals/micronutrients like potassium, manganese, copper, iron, selenium, zinc and can keep your electrolytes balanced and blood levels healthy." "The nutritional qualities of a coconut - its meat and its water/juice - are nothing short of miraculous," Tekula explains.
The fruit has a wooden shell surrounded by a fibrous husk, but inside is the stuff that a person wants - the coconut meat, which can be eaten raw or cooked, and the drinkable liquid, called coconut water, according to the Missouri Botanical Garden. If you're sufficiently agile and adventurous, you can climb up the coconut tree to pick coconuts otherwise, you can wait for them to ripen and fall to the ground. Niu is the kinolau (physical embodiment) of a Hawaiian god." They are the symbol of resilience! They are celebrated here so much so that traditionally, a coconut palm is planted at the birth time of a child born here in Hawaii. Some of the ancestors of the trees currently found in Hawai'i also floated ashore, alive for up to 4 months at sea, still able to germinate. "And while they are not native to this place, they are one of the celebrated "canoe plants" - valued cargo on the sailing canoes of the original Polynesian voyagers to Hawai`i. "In Hawaii, coconut palms are known as 'niu' and are considered a very important food source," Tekula continues. Indeed, according to this 2004 Guardian article, three children who survived the sinking of their parents' boat in Papua New Guinea and swam to a small island managed to live for several day on a diet of coconuts, plums and oysters, until they were finally rescued. "Without a doubt, if you were stranded on an island, you'd want a mature coconut tree to be there with you! There are stories of island and coastal people in the tropics surviving months of drought with coconut palms providing the only drinking water available." "They are referred to as 'the tree of life' in the Philippines, 'the tree with a thousand uses' in Malaysia, and 'the tree which provides all the necessities of life' in Sanskrit," Tekula continues. Atlas Obscura reports that nearly 40 percent of the world's islands exist within the climate zone that's hospitable to coconut trees.
Tekula explains in an email that although coconut palms aren't native to the Hawaiian islands, they are commonly found growing there and elsewhere in the Pacific. It has fragrant yellow flowers, which appear in clusters, and of course, coconuts, which technically are a fruit rather than a nut, and grow to up to 14 inches (36 centimeters) long. They're tall trees, growing as tall as 100 feet (30 meters), and have a trunk with a branchless, light gray trunk that's swollen at the base and topped by a crown of arching green fronds that stretch as long as 20 feet (6 meters).
The coconut palm tree ( Cocos nucifera) is native to tropical islands in the western Pacific Ocean, according to the Missouri Botanical Garden. Merwin and features over 400 species of palm from around the world. "My main answer to you is COCONUTS!!" says Sara Tekula, director of programs at the Merwin Conservancy, a 19-acre (7.7-hectare) sanctuary for rare palms that was hand-planted by the late poet W.S. But if you're looking for the palm species that would produce the most nutritious fruit and would be likely to be found on a Pacific island, the fruit that Tom Hanks (and Wilson?) could have survived on, the choice narrows down. There are numerous species of palm trees that produce edible fruits, ranging from date palms, which have been cultivated since ancient times in the Middle East, and the snake palm, which produces a reddish-brown fruit whose pulp has a sweet, acidic taste, to the peach palm found in Central and South America, whose fruit must be cooked for several hours before it can be eaten.