Caribbean Coconuts – A Surprising Fact I Bet You Don’t Know!

Before reading the rest of this article on Caribbean coconuts, I want you to do me a favor:

1. Get in a comfortable position

2. Close your eyes

3. Allow yourself to feel nice and relaxed, almost to the point of taking a nap.

4. Imagine that you are a warm Caribbean beach

5. Explore that image in your mind for a while

6. Once you have memorized your image, open your eyes

Now what exactly did you see in your mental image of a warm Caribbean beach?

Did your image include coconut trees? Did you smell coconut oil?

I bet he did it because this is what most people think of when they think of a Caribbean beach. Dust-white sand, blue-green water that sparkles in the sunlight, and those iconic coconut trees that line the beaches.

Coconut palms are such an important part of everyone’s vision of a Caribbean landscape that they assume they were always there.

But guess that ?!

They are NOT actually native to the Caribbean and have been there less than 500 years!

They were introduced to the Caribbean region by the Spanish and other European colonizers during the first half of the 16th century. However, Christopher Columbus and his men never saw a coconut on any of their 4 trips to the New World. These took place between 1492 and 1504. The coconuts just weren’t there when they arrived. They came later.

I know this may sound a bit surprising. You may be saying something like, “But … I thought that coconuts could resist sea water erosion and were buoyant enough to float thousands of miles. Right? Isn’t that how they got to the Caribbean and around the world? ?? They floated there from somewhere else, right? “

Well, I know this is what a lot of people believe. In fact, this is what some historians believed. However, the evidence shows that this is wrong, and it does so very definitively.

None of the earliest recorded records of the Spanish, and the records of other colonizing European nations that were exploring the Caribbean in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, ever mention a coconut. Also, there was no Taino or Caribbean word for coconut – these were the natives of the Caribbean islands and if anyone knew if they were there they would have known. A native word for coconut is missing because coconuts did not exist before the Spanish brought them there. Most linguists believe that the word coconut comes from the Spanish word for “monkey” because they thought that the coconut looked like a monkey face with two eyes and an open mouth.

Now, the Spanish did discover coconuts on the WEST coast of Central America. For a long time, history books and other historical accounts wrongly said that coconuts had spread from the west coast of Central America to the Caribbean. However, genetic evidence very convincingly shows that this is absolutely wrong!

It turns out that when a DNA analysis is performed on coconuts from around the world, they are classified into 2 distinct and separate genetic groupings. They are all one species, but the 2 groups are genetically different and can easily be separated.

A group of coconuts originated in the Pacific region of Indonesia. The other group of coconuts originated near India in the Indian Ocean. The only place where the two groups seemed to have mixed is Madagascar. It has been very convincingly shown that the coconuts found on the WEST side of Central America are in the Indonesian Pacific group and that the coconuts found in the Caribbean are in the India group. Therefore, the coconuts in the Caribbean did NOT originate from the west coast of Central America.

If you play historical detective, it seems that the coconuts from India were first carried by people or by currents to the east coast of Africa. Then much later, in the 16th century, they were moved by people to the west coast of Africa and shortly after this happened, they were brought to the new world by the colonizers and / or missionaries of the time.

As an interesting side note, I would like to mention that the coconuts on the west coast of Central America are believed to have been brought over by Polynesian sailors over 1000 years before Columbus “discovered” the New World. That’s something to ponder! Never take something written in a history textbook like the gospel. It is now almost certain that Columbus was NOT the first non-native to “discover” America.

Well, back to the story of the Caribbean coconut:

Once the Europeans “discovered” the coconut, they quickly realized that this would be a very simple way to transport sterilized water (coconut water) and nutrients on board ships heading on long saltwater voyages where the water sweet was scarce and often contaminated. .

Coconuts were planted in the Caribbean since at least the mid-16th century, as there is a written record of this. Sometimes they were planted on the margins of the sugar plantations to provide water and food for those who worked on the plantations. It wasn’t until a few centuries later that coconuts were grown on a large scale commercially as a cash crop.

Now, I know this may sound off topic, but please allow me a moment because I need to tell you about the shipwrecks before I continue with the story about the Caribbean coconuts:

There were many shipwrecks in the 1500s, including the very famous incident in which an entire fleet of Spanish ships laden with gold sank while trying to traverse the Pasaje de la Mona between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico during a terrible hurricane. In fact, the Mona Passage is famous for shipwrecks, as the sea conditions were difficult to navigate, even in the best weather conditions. In fact, the Mona Pass can be difficult to navigate even today with modern technology. Many men have lost their lives in this area, as many ships were wrecked there.

So why am I talking about shipwrecks when I should be talking about coconuts?

Well, it turns out that the coconuts spread all over the Caribbean very quickly due to the movement of the ships, that is, the ships moved them much faster than the currents. In fact, when there were shipwrecks, there could be thousands of coconuts thrown overboard in a whole new place for coconuts. When these coconuts reached land, some of them surely took root naturally. However, it turns out that it was quite common for people in the Caribbean region to intentionally take the bounty of coconut that the sea had given them and plant them. In this way, most of the coconuts would survive to produce another coconut plant. In fact, this is exactly what happened in West Palm Beach Florida and how it got its name. A ship was wrecked on the high seas sending a few thousand coconuts that local people planted when they reached land.

The most popular vacation destination in the Dominican Republic is now on the east coast and is called Punta Cana. In fact, not only the original small community of Punta Cana, but all 39 miles of the east coast, is commonly known as Punta Cana or the Punta Cana Coast. However, the first investors in the area called it “La Costa del Coco”. This was due to the very lush and very mature coconut forest that lines the coast in this region and actually stretched quite far inland. Sometimes you will still see the phrase “The coconut coast” used.

I have no definitive proof, but I can’t help but think that those coconut trees lining the Punta Cana coastline that vacationers enjoy so much may be descendants of coconuts lost during a long-ago shipwreck. The coconut grove could even be from an old ship wreck dating back to the 1500s. In a way, you may be looking at a historic shipwreck marker when you look at those coconut trees.

The next time you are in the Dominican Republic or elsewhere in the Caribbean and see a coconut palm tree, remember that you are NOT looking at a native Caribbean plant. Try closing your eyes and imagining what the Caribbean landscape would be like without the coconut plants. It’s harder to do than you think! We are so conditioned to think of coconuts as synonymous with the Caribbean. Perhaps it is a good lesson to always keep questioning things, no matter how sure we are that they are true.