In Search of the World’s Largest Coconut on the Palmyra Atoll
(Meeting Summary by Lenny Goldstein)
A large crowd ignored rainy weather to attend the South Florida Palm Society’s fifth meeting of the year. The featured speaker was Dr. Patrick Griffith, who described a mission last November to expand knowledge of the Palmyra coconut palm. Last collected over 100 years ago by Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari, it owes its fame to the fact that it produces a rather triangular seednut that is the largest of any of the hundreds of varieties of coconut palms known worldwide.
The Palmyra Atoll is a relative speck of land — more accurately, several specks of land — located in the central Pacific Ocean, about 1,000 miles south of Hawaii. While it is almost entirely owned by The Nature Conservancy, it is administered by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and is officially known as the Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. Patrick, Executive Director of Montgomery Botanical Center, presented a program describing and illustrating his team’s efforts to determine whether the giant Palmyra coconut is endemic to the atoll.
A couple of questions had to be addressed: Was the giant coconut (Cocos nucifera var. palmyrensis) introduced by early Polynesians? Did it arrive naturally by floating? And there was a complication: From time to time, attempts had been made to create a copra industry on the atoll by introducing quantities of coconuts (Cocos nucifera var. nucifera) from Hawaii. One such attempt, in 1950-51, resulted in the production of copra for several years during the decade. Over time, those feral coconuts multiplied on the atoll and started to hybridize with the big coconut. The Griffith group’s challenge was — figuratively — to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The giant coconut was compared with the feral varieties for several characteristics: adaptation to dispersal, ease of transport, agronomic efficiency, ease of husking, water content, presence in inhabited islands, and representation in germplasm collections. The investigation concluded that Cocos nucifera var. palmyrensis is (1) native and endemic to Palmyra, (2) a vital Crop Wild Relative, (3) under threat of genetic dilution, and (4) essential to conserve.
Patrick’s project is not over. In future visits, plans are to map the occurrence of the giant coconut, expand sampling, and expand documentation. The SFPS will, of course, be eager to present additional findings to our members.
Following the program, we conducted our usual auction. We continue to be grateful to the donors who help distribute interesting plants to our members. Here are the species that made their way to new gardens:
Allagoptera caudescens
Anthurium moodeanum
Archontophoenix myolensis
Archontophoenix tuckeri
Carpoxylon macrospermum
Coccothrinax montgomeryana
Coccothrinax sp.
Copernicia alba
Copernicia fragrans
Copernicia gigas
Dictyosperma album var. conjugatum
Euphorbia sp.
Gaussia gomez-pompae
Pritchardia pacifica
Pseudophoenix sargentii
Sabal lougheediana
Sabal miamiensis
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