一千年来。对生活在波利尼西亚和亚洲的人们来说椰子扮演着极为重要的角色，但在西方度界，椰子一直属于非同一般的外来物种，有时会非常稀缺。13世纪晚期，意大利商人旅行家马可渡罗似乎在南亚看到了椰子，在约翰•曼德维尔14世纪中叶的旅行作品中也提到了“印度的巨大坚果”。如今，棕榈遮蔽的热带海滩形象在西方已成为意用的手法，用以推销度假，巧克力棒，起泡饮料，甚至爱情故事。

For millennia, the coconut has been central to the lives of Polynesian and Asian peoples. In the western world, on the other hand, coconuts have always been exotic and unusual, sometimes rare. The Italian merchant traveller Marco Polo apparently saw coconuts in South Asia in the late 13th century, and among the mid-14th-century travel writings of Sir John Mandeville there is mention of 'great Notes of Ynde' (great Nuts of India). Today, images of palm-fringed tropical beaches are clichés in the west to sell holidays, chocolate bars, fizzy drinks and even romance.

通常，我们会把椰子想象成棕色的炮弹形状，打开之后，会有甜味的白色果肉。但我们只看到了这种水果的一部分，并没有看到生长它的那株植物。椰子树有光滑细长的灰色树干，它们可以长到30米高，这是一种用来建房屋的重要木材来源。并且越来越多地被用于替换家具建造领域中濒临灭绝的硬木。树干被莲座状的树叶围绕，每一片最长可以长到六米。这些叶子中心有坚硬的叶脉，在世界上多地方，在去除叶子的绿色部分后，它们被用作刷子，未成熟的椰花紧密地聚在树干顶端的叶子中。敲打花梗得到的汁液可以用来生产饮品，也可以通过煮沸汁液进行浓缩来生产用于烹饪的糖。

Typically, we envisage coconuts as brown cannonballs that, when opened, provide sweet white flesh. But we see only part of the fruit and none of the plant from which they come. The coconut palm has a smooth, slender, grey trunk, up to 30 metres tall. This is an important source of timber for building houses, and is increasingly being used as a replacement for endangered hardwoods in the furniture construction industry. The trunk is surmounted by a rosette of leaves, each of which may be up to six metres long. The leaves have hard veins in their centres which, in many parts of the world, are used as brushes after the green part of the leaf has been stripped away. Immature coconut flowers are tightly clustered together among the leaves at the top of the trunk. The flower stems may be tapped for their sap to produce a drink, and the sap can also be reduced by boiling to produce a type of sugar used for cooking.

椰子树每年可以产生多达七十多枚果实，每个重达一公斤以上。椰果的外壁分为三层：不透水的外层，纤维状的中层、坚硬的内层。厚实的纤维中层产生“椰壳纤维”，它具有许多用途，在制造绳子方面尤为重要，木质的最内层椰壳，和其三个突出的“眼睛”围绕着种子，以椰壳为原料的重要产物是本炭，它被广泛用于各种产业中，也被作为家用的烹任燃料，在亚洲的多地方，椰壳切成两半后也被当作碗使用。

Coconut palms produce as many as seventy fruits per year, weighing more than a kilogram each. The wall of the fruit has three layers: a waterproof outer layer, a fibrous middle layer and a hard, inner layer. The thick fibrous middle layer produces coconut fibre, 'coir', which has numerous uses and is particularly important in manufacturing ropes. The woody innermost layer, the shell, with its three prominent 'eyes', surrounds the seed. An important product obtained from the shell is charcoal, which is widely used in various industries as well as in the home as a cooking fuel. When broken in half, the shells are also used as bowls in many parts of Asia.

椰壳内是发育中的种子需要的营养物质（胚乳）。起初，胚乳是甜味的液体——椰汁，经常被作为一种饮品，并且提供促进其他植物更快生长并带来更高产量的激素。随着果实成熟，椰汁逐渐凝固以形成亮自的、富含脂肪的、可食用的果肉。干椰子果肉可以用来制作椰子油或椰奶，并在世界上不同地方被广泛用于烹饪和制作化妆品。随着阿尔弗雷德•诺贝尔为世界带来了基于硝化甘油的发明:炸药，椰子脂的衍生物——丙三醇——在一个截然不同的领域获得了战略性的重要地位。

Inside the shell are the nutrients (endosperm) needed by the developing seed. Initially, the endosperm is a sweetish liquid, coconut water, which is enjoyed as a drink, but also provides the hormones which encourage other plants to grow more rapidly and produce higher yields. As the fruit matures, the coconut water gradually solidifies to form the brilliant white, fat-rich, edible flesh or meat. Dried coconut flesh, 'copra', is made into coconut oil and coconut milk, which are widely used in cooking in different parts of the world, as well as in cosmetics. A derivative of coconut fat, glycerine, acquired strategic importance in a quite different sphere, as Alfred Nobel introduced the world to his nitroglycerine-based invention: dynamite.

椰子的生物特性使其成为植物世界伟大的航海者以及沿海的殖民者。巨大且富含能量的果实可以在水中漂浮并克服盐的影响，但并不是可以无限存活的；研究表明在海上漂浮大约110天之后，它们不再能够生长。被顺利播撒到荒岛沿岸后，仅仅有沙地可以生长，并且暴露在热带阳光的完全照射下，椰树的种子依然可以生根发芽。种子中随胚乳凝固产生的气穴可以保护胚芽。此外，帮助椰子在航行中漂浮的纤维果实壁贮存了水分，这些水分可以在椰子的幼苗开始生长时用来滋养根系。

Their biology would appear to make coconuts the great maritime voyagers and coastal colonizers of the plant world. The large, energy-rich fruits are able to float in water and tolerate salt, but cannot remain viable indefinitely; studies suggest after about 110 days at sea they are no longer able to germinate. Literally cast onto desert island shores, with little more than sand to grow in and exposed to the full glare of the tropical sun, coconut seeds are able to germinate and root. The air pocket in the seed, created as the endosperm solidifies, protects the embryo. In addition, the fibrous fruit wall that helped it to float during the voyage stores moisture that can be taken up by the roots of the coconut seedling as it starts to grow.

关于椰子起源地的学术讨论已经进行了几个世纪。在欧洲探险者达•伽马和哥伦布15世纪末和16世纪初的航行之前，非洲西部、加勒比海或者美洲东岸都没有椰子树。16世纪的贸易和人口迁移模式表明阿拉伯商人和欧洲水手们可能将椰子从亚洲南部或东南部带往非洲。之后穿过大西洋到达美洲东岸。但是16世纪水手们沿着美洲西岸发现的椰子源自何处成为了几个世纪以来讨论的主题。关于发源地，人们提出了两个截然不同的说法：它来自亚洲，以及它们来自美洲本土。两种说法都存在问题。在亚洲，椰子的多样性程度很高，并且有千年来人类使用的证据——但并不存在野生的亲缘植物。在美洲，有很相近的椰子亲缘植物，但没有证据表明椰子来自本土。这些问题导致了有趣的推断，即椰子发源自太平洋中的珊瑚岛并从那里散播到世界各地。

There have been centuries of academic debate over the origins of the coconut. There were no coconut palms in West Africa, the Caribbean or the east coast of the Americas before the voyages of the European explorers Vasco da Gama and Columbus in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. 16th century trade and human migration patterns reveal that Arab traders and European sailors are likely to have moved coconuts from South and Southeast Asia to Africa and then across the Atlantic to the east coast of America. But the origin of coconuts discovered along the west coast of America by 16th century sailors has been the subject of centuries of discussion. Two diametrically opposed origins have been proposed: that they came from Asia, or that they were native to America. Both suggestions have problems In Asia, there is a large degree of coconut diversity and evidence of millennia of human use - but there are no relatives growing in the wild. In America, there are close coconut relatives, but no evidence that coconuts are indigenous. These problems have led to the intriguing suggestion that coconuts originated on coral islands in the Pacific and were dispersed from there.