Gerald McCormack, CINHT
Did the Coconut Palm (Cocos nucifera) originate in the Americas? Was it in the Cook Islands when the first Polynesians arrived?
Palms, fruit, flowers and leave – Cook Islands, Rarotonga – Gerald McCormack
The first Western record of Coconut Palms was in 545AD by Cosmos, an Egyptian, who saw them in India and Sri Lanka. Other reports followed, and Marco Polo reported them in Indonesia in 1280. The Portuguese Vasco de Gama discovered the route around Africa to India in 1498. He did not find Coconut Palms on the Atlantic coast of Africa nor in southern Africa. His first record of ‘coquos’ was at Malindi in Kenya. On his way home he left coconuts at Cape Verde, the first in the Atlantic.
In the 1490s Columbus erroneously reported Coconut Palms in the Caribbean. It is now concluded that Diego Corenco, a former pastor of Cape Verde, introduced the first coconuts into the Caribbean to Puerto Rico in 1549. A recent re-evaluation of early Spanish records has concluded that coconuts were pre-Spanish on the Pacific coasts of Costa Rica, Panama and northern Colombia. The writers concluded that coconuts had reached America naturally by floating or they may have been carried by ancient voyagers. Continue reading →
