You mean the white stuff in the center? That’s not the “flesh,” that’s the coconut meat, which I said is the solid endosperm of the seed. Inside that is the coconut water, which is liquid endosperm. The pale yellow material surrounding it is the husk, which corresponds to the flesh or pulp of a typical drupe. It’s fibrous even in a green coconut.
A peach is a typical drupe. The pit corresponds to the coconut, the pulp corresponds to the husk.
I mean the thick layer of white “flesh” between the green skin and the round core part that you buy in supermarkets.
Yeah, if you get silly-technical, most things we call nuts aren’t ‘true’ nuts :-
Coconuts are drupes - so are almonds, walnuts, pecans
Peanuts are legumes
Brazil nuts, pine nuts, chestnuts, cashews and macadamias are just seeds
Hazelnuts and acorns are true nuts.
You will be surprised at how hard, dry and fibrous that flesh really is.
Chestnuts are true nuts.
I just glanced over at a three-foot palm in my office that I started from seed a few years ago (collected from a big tree on South Padre Island outside a restaurant where we ate).
I have a ten-year-old Vietnamese pygmy date palm also started from seed.
So yes, they grow more or less readily from seeds of various sizes and conformations.
As I said, that’s fibrous, not fleshy (although it corresponds to the flesh of a typical drupe). You need a machete to cut it. Here’s an image with more detail. Trying to eat it would produce rather distressing results.
I live in the mid-atlantic region where squirrels are thicker than grass (just about) so we see this behavior all the time. We often see them burying or hiding food in the fall, and then in late winter when they start getting hungrier you see them digging around to find things that were tucked away in the fall. Also, our lawn is frequently full of little divits where the squirrels have been digging around.
palm kernel oil comes from the seed of the oil palm.
Yes, but what would the average airspeed velocity of a laden African swallow be?
By the way, fresh green coconuts (by which I mean the same species that Americans usually call coconuts, but cut from the tree while green, before they fall) have a different taste of the water, and the flesh is much softer and sweeter than the more mature ones you’ll find in a grocery store. Apparently they don’t keep well though, so find your own Hawai’ian roadside vendor 
Yes, here in Panama they’re called pipas and commonly sold by the roadside with a small hole cut in the top and a straw.
As the fruit matures, the liquid endosperm gradually becomes jellylike and then solidifies into what we commonly think of as coconut meat.
Is there any use at all for that part? Whole Foods sells that food whole (probably at a high premium over the dehusked ones.)
You can carve little trinkets to sell to tourists. Otherwise I haven’t noticed any specific use.
[quote=“nearwildheaven, post:14, topic:823105”]
Here’s a video of a woman opening, preparing, and eating a sprouted coconut. I learned a lot about coconuts just from watching this. Enjoy!
[/QUOTE]Thanks, that is neat.
Last I heard, coconut rind was actually used to make supercapacitors. But I don’t know the exact details about which part of the fruit is used.
he can do that, but can’t get 7 people off of an island a few hours away from Hawaii?
I suspect it’s burned to make “fluffy” carbon.
Back in my aquarium days, Coconut activated charcoal was the best - extremely fine powder with enormous surface area. A teaspoon would filter a 50 gallon tank until the water was so clear it was invisible.
What type of filter used the teaspoon of activated charcoal?
Yup, fluffy charcoal with high surface area. But I don’t know if that’s the green part that’s usually cleaned off before it gets to the store, or the brown part.
And jz, I laughed.
Was it a hang on back filter, or a canister?
