Think of the biggest coconut you have ever seen, perhaps on a holiday in Kerala or Goa. Now imagine a seed that weighs as much as a 25-kilogram bag of rice. That is the coco de mer, the largest seed of any plant in the world.
A record-breaking seed
According to Guinness World Records, a coco de mer seed can be up to 50 centimetres long and weigh up to 25 kilograms. A normal coconut would look tiny next to it! People also call it the “double coconut”.
A palm that takes its time
The coco de mer palm grows naturally on only two islands in the world: Praslin and Curieuse, in the Seychelles, an island country in the Indian Ocean. Its forest home, the Vallée de Mai on Praslin, was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.
This palm is never in a hurry.
- It does not produce nuts until it is at least 25 years old.
- Each nut takes about seven years to ripen on the tree.
- Male and female flowers grow on separate trees.
- A palm can live for hundreds of years.
The mystery of the sea coconut
For a long time, nobody knew where these huge nuts came from. Sailors only found them floating at sea or washed up on beaches, including in the Maldives. Some people believed they grew on a magical tree at the bottom of the sea! That is how the palm got its name: “coco de mer” means “coconut of the sea”.
Its scientific name, Lodoicea maldivica, still carries the name of the Maldives, even though the palm does not grow there. Its true home in the Seychelles was found in 1768.
Protecting a rare palm
Because it grows in so few places, the coco de mer is protected. A nut can be taken out of the Seychelles legally only if it has an official tag and an export permit.
Wonder about: A palm that takes 25 years to produce nuts, and seven more years to ripen each one, is very hard to replace. What could people do to help such slow-growing plants survive?