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Coconut history 102
Yesterday’ post by Hugh Harries on the recent article in AramcoWord entitled Cracking Coconut’s History, by Ramin Ganeshram, elicited this response from another coconut expert, Luc Baudouin, on the coconut google group.
I enjoyed reading the [article], especially the picture from Dioscorides’s Tractatus De Herbis, a 15th Century manuscript. Congratulations to the author. While I share several of Hugh’s comments, I beg to differ as regards the presence of coconut on the Pacific coast of America. Several travellers mention its presence and provide multiple evidence. I will mention only two diagnostic traits.
The first one is simply that coconut has huge fruits, unparalleled among palms (except for Lodoicea maldivica, known as… the sea coconut). That the coconut fruit is as big as a human head was mentioned in virtually all accounts of coconut before AD 1500 and can thus be considered as part of the definition of coconut at that time. It is thus unreasonable to suppose that palms such as Attalea, Bactris or Elaeis were misidentified as coconut. In fact, palms of these and other genera were described as distinct ‘kinds’ by Oviedo, and their nuts were described as comparable to a coconut, but “the size of a walnut”, or “of a Seville olive” etc.
The second one is seed dissemination by oceanic currents, which is unique to coconut among palms. It was observed in the mouth of the Santa Maria river, southern from the old Spanish town of Nata. This used to be a bay which was converted into a salt works. The original population still exists in Aguadulce.
When and where was coconut first brought to America clearly remains an open question. BC 150 in the Bahia de Caraquez? AD 800 in the Gulf of Guayaquil? Or some other unidentified landing? We really don’t know but it was clearly before the Spaniards arrived. One may hesitate to admit it because of the extremely long distance from the Philippines to the American coasts, but it’s a fact. Hugh mentioned the presence of coconuts of the San Ramon type in Guam and this could contribute to ease the problem. It would be a two-leg journey.
In this context, the question of survival should be taken in the opposite way. While the Panama Tall can be described as an ‘incipient domesticate’, it did thrive at a small number of locations on the Pacific coasts of America. This shows that it did not lose its ability to propagate itself without human help (but in the absence of competitors that are more adapted to long distance dissemination).
I am talking of the Pacific coast of Panama. As regards Mexico and the Caribbean, I agree with Hugh.
Coconut history 101
Coconut expert Hugh Harries has sent us this comment on the recent article in AramcoWord entitled Cracking Coconut’s History, by Ramin Ganeshram.
Amusingly illustrated and attractively written, in this article Ramin Ganeshram records that in the last few years coconut production, export and processing have become a multibillion-dollar global industry. In fact, coconut was global from the 1860s to the 1960s. It was the leading vegetable oil on international markets for the best part of a century.
Ramin does not mention Polynesians or the Pacific Ocean, but to them the coconut was more than a source of income. It was the life-support system that ensured their extraordinary survival in locations where coconut palms are routinely decimated by hurricanes and tsunamis or simply washed away by rising sea levels.
The article is not quite up to date as a history, even though Ramin refers to the genetic testing underwritten by the National Geographic Society in 2011. This confirmed that today’s cultivated coconut originated in India and Southeast Asia but, surprisingly, claimed it was taken by boat to the Pacific coast of America more than 2,000 years ago. Yet coconuts would not survive since then without cultivation to control weeds and pests or recover from natural disaster.
There is a general consensus coconuts grow very well on coral atolls but an equally general disagreement as to whether they were dispersed to remote islands by floating and were capable of self establishment, or if not, were carried by boat and planted where they could not float.
This is most clearly recognised where they were introduced in Central America and the Caribbean in the mid 16th century. Indian or East African coconuts carried by Portuguese boats into the Atlantic reached Brazil and Puerto Rico by the 1550s. At much the same time, Southeast Asian coconuts were taken by the first Spanish mariners who found the the Manila-Acapulco route in 1565.
It was only when the Panama canal opened 100 years ago that the differences between the two contrasting types were recognised when those from the Pacific coast were imported to Jamaica for replanting areas devastated by hurricanes.
My thanks to Ramin Ganeshram for giving me the opportunity to add some information that I hope will be useful when a revised second edition of this history is prepared.
Brainfood: Wild peanuts, Salt-tolerance, Melon diversity, Consumption & biodiversity, German veggie fanciers, Oh oh oomycetes, Miscanthus diversity, Urban pollinators, Milpa bees
- Genomic characterisation of Arachis porphyrocalyx (Valls & C.E. Simpson, 2005) (Leguminosae): multiple origin of Arachis species with x=9. At least two distinct origins for the x=9 species.
- Salt Tolerant Varieties: A Biological Intervention to Manage Saline and Sodic Environment and Sustain Livelihoods. Salt-tolerant rice and wheat varieties are being adopted where needed in this bit of Haryana, but not as much as they could be.
- Genotyping-by-sequencing of a melon (Cucumis melo L.) germplasm collection from a secondary center of diversity highlights patterns of genetic variation and genomic features of different gene pools. Three subgroups, and that’s just in Puglia, the heel bit of Italy.
- Quantifying biodiversity losses due to human consumption: a global-scale footprint analysis. Food consumption is the single greatest driver of biodiversity loss, somewhere else.
- Old vegetable varieties: attitude, consumption behaviour and knowledge of German consumers. There’s a consumer segment in Germany that could be labelled “fanciers of old vegetable varieties,” apparently.
- Emerging oomycete threats to plants and animals. Be afraid.
- Ecological characteristics and in situ genetic associations for yield-component traits of wild Miscanthus from eastern Russia. Arctic sugarcane? It could happen.
- The city as a refuge for insect pollinators. It could happen.
- Sweat bees on hot chillies: provision of pollination services by native bees in traditional slash-and-burn agriculture in the Yucatán Peninsula of tropical Mexico. The milpa is pretty good refuge for bees already.
Remembering George Wagdi Ayad
My friend George Ayad passed away a couple of days ago. When I first started out at IBPGR, as it then was, he was the guy I would go to for advice, both technical and personal. I followed in his footstep, or tried to, when I was posted to Nicosia in 1987 to take over from him the office he had set up there to cover the Middle East and North Africa, helping inchoate genebanks get off the ground. I owe him a lot, maybe everything. And I’m not the only one.