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The Coco de mer (Lodoicea maldivica), the sole member of the genus Lodoicea, is a palm endemic to the islands of Praslin and Curieuse in the Seychelles. It formerly also occurred on St Pierre, Chauve-Souris and Ile Ronde (Praslin) in the Seychelles group but has become extinct on these islands. The conservation status of a species is an indicator of the likelihood of that species continuing to survive. ...
Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1920x2560, 3409 KB) a female Coco de mer palm tree with some seeds in the growth. ...
Scientific classification or biological classification is how biologists group and categorize extinct and living species of organisms. ...
Divisions Green algae Chlorophyta Charophyta Land plants (embryophytes) Non-vascular plants (bryophytes) Marchantiophyta - liverworts Anthocerotophyta - hornworts Bryophyta - mosses Vascular plants (tracheophytes) †Rhyniophyta - rhyniophytes †Zosterophyllophyta - zosterophylls Lycopodiophyta - clubmosses †Trimerophytophyta - trimerophytes Equisetophyta - horsetails Pteridophyta - true ferns Psilotophyta - whisk ferns Ophioglossophyta - adderstongues Seed plants (spermatophytes) †Pteridospermatophyta - seed ferns Pinophyta - conifers Cycadophyta - cycads Ginkgophyta...
Classes Magnoliopsida - Dicots Liliopsida - Monocots The flowering plants (also called angiosperms) are a major group of land plants. ...
Liliopsida is the botanical name for a class. ...
Family Arecaceae Arecales is the botanical order which includes only the palm family, Arecaceae. ...
Genera Many; see list of Arecaceae genera Arecaceae (also known as Palmae), the Palm Family, is a family of flowering plants belonging to the monocot order, Arecales. ...
In biology, binomial nomenclature is the formal method of naming species. ...
Johann Friedrich Gmelin (August 8, 1748 - November 1, 1804) was a German naturalist and botanist. ...
Christian Hendrik Persoon (February 1, 1761 - November 16, 1836) was a mycologist who made additions to Linnaeus mushroom taxonomy. ...
Genera Many; see list of Arecaceae genera Arecaceae (also known as Palmae), the Palm Family, is a family of flowering plants belonging to the monocot order, Arecales. ...
In biology and ecology endemic means exclusively native to a place or biota, in contrast to cosmopolitan or introduced. ...
Praslin is the second largest island of the Seychelles, lying north east of Mahé. It is named for the French Duc de Praslin and has a population of around 5,000 people. ...
Curieuse is an island in the Seychelles, and is prized as one of only two islands to have the rare Coco-De-Mer growing on its land. ...
It grows to 25-34 m tall. The leaves are fan-shaped, 7-10 m long and 4.5 m wide with a 4 m petiole. It is dioecious, with separate male and female plants. The male flowers are catkin-like, up to 1 m long. The mature fruit is 40-50 cm in diameter and weighs 15-30 kg, and contains the largest seed in the plant kingdom. The fruit, which requires 6-7 years to mature and a further two years to germinate, is sometimes also referred to as the sea coconut, double coconut, coco fesse, or Seychelles nut. The leaves of a Beech tree A leaf with laminar structure and pinnate venation In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant organ specialized for photosynthesis. ...
Plant sexuality deals with the wide variety of sexual reproduction systems found across the plant kingdom. ...
Clivia miniata bears bright orange flowers. ...
A male catkin on a willow Male catkins on a Common Hazel in January before opening Catkins, or aments, are slim, cylindrical flower clusters, wind-pollinated and without petals, that can be found in many plant families, including Betulaceae, Fagaceae, Moraceae, and Salicaceae. ...
Fruit stall in Barcelona, Spain. ...
A ripe red jalapeno cut open to show the seeds For other uses, see Seed (disambiguation). ...
Divisions Green algae Chlorophyta Charophyta Land plants (embryophytes) Non-vascular plants (bryophytes) Marchantiophyta - liverworts Anthocerotophyta - hornworts Bryophyta - mosses Vascular plants (tracheophytes) †Rhyniophyta - rhyniophytes †Zosterophyllophyta - zosterophylls Lycopodiophyta - clubmosses †Trimerophytophyta - trimerophytes Equisetophyta - horsetails Pteridophyta - true ferns Psilotophyta - whisk ferns Ophioglossophyta - adderstongues Seed plants (spermatophytes) †Pteridospermatophyta - seed ferns Pinophyta - conifers Cycadophyta - cycads Ginkgophyta...
Ernst Haeckels presentation of a three-kingdom system (Plantae, Protista, Animalia) in his 1866 Generelle Morphologie der Organismen. ...
The Seychelles nut was once believed to be a sea-bean or drift seed, a seed designed to be dispersed by the sea. However, it is now known that the viable nut is too heavy to float, and only rotted out nuts can be found on the sea surface; this explains why the trees are limited in range to just two islands. The sailors who first saw the nut floating in the sea imagined that it resembled a woman's disembodied buttocks. This fanciful association is reflected in one of the plant's archaic botanical names, Lodoicea callipyge Comm. ex J. St.-Hil., in which callipyge is from Greek words meaning 'beautiful rump'. Other botanical names used in the past include Lodoicea sechellarum Labill. and Lodoicea sonneratii (Giseke) Baill. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1740x1920, 2485 KB) seed (fruit) of a female Coco de Mer palm tree Photo taken by user in July 2004 on Praslin, Seychelles. ...
Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1740x1920, 2485 KB) seed (fruit) of a female Coco de Mer palm tree Photo taken by user in July 2004 on Praslin, Seychelles. ...
A nude contemporary European woman A woman is a female human. ...
Henri Ernest Baillon was a French botanist and physician. ...
Until the true source of nut was discovered in 1768, it was believed by many to grow on a mythical tree at the bottom of the sea; European nobles in the sixteenth century would often have the shells of these nuts cleaned and decorated with valuable jewels as collectibles for their private galleries. The coco de mer is now a rare protected species. 1768 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ...
The name of the genus, Lodoicea, is derived from Lodoicus, the Latinised form of Louis, in honour of King Louis XV of France. Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...
Louis XV (February 15, 1710 – May 10, 1774), the Beloved (French: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1715 until his death. ...
The species is grown as an ornamental tree in many areas in the tropics, and subsidiary populations have been established on Mahé and Silhouette Islands in the Seychelles to help conserve the species. An ornamental plant is a plant species or cultivar that is grown indoors, or in gardens and parks for its amenity value, or for beauty (in its end use), rather than commercial or other value. ...
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Description
Habitat
The palm is robust, solitary, upto 30 m tall with an erect, spineless, stem which is ringed with leaf scars (Calstrom, unpublished). The base of the trunk is of a bulbous form and this bulb fits into a natural bowl, or socket, about 2.5 ft in diametre and 18 inches in depth, narrowing towards the bottom. This bowl is pierced with hundreds of small oval holes about the size of a thimble with hollow tubes corresponding on the outside through which the roots penetrate the ground on all sides, never, however, becoming attached to the bowl; their partial elasticity, affording an almost imprerceptible but very necessary "play" to the parent stem when struggling against the force of violent gales.
Leaves
The crown is a rather dense head of foliage with leaves that are stiff, palmate upto 10 m in diametre and petioles of two to four metres in length. The leaf is plicate at the base, cut one third or more into segments 4-10 cm broad with bifid end which are often drooping. A triangular cleft develops at the petiole base (Uhl and Dransfield, 1987).
Flowers
The clusters of staminate flowers are arranged spirally and are flanked by very tough leathery bracts. Each has a small bracteole, three sepals forming a cylindrical tube, and a three-lobed corolla. There are 17 to 22 stamens. The pistillate flowers are solitary and borne at the angles of the rachis and are partially sunken in it in the form of a cup. They are ovoid with three petals as well as three sepals (Uhl and Dransfield, 1987). It has been suggested that they may be pollinated by aninals such as the endemic lizards which inhabit the forest where they occur (Beaver and Chong Seng, 1992). Pollination by wind and drain are also thought to be important (Edwards, Kollman and Fleischmann, 2002). Only when Locoicea begins to produce flowers is it possible to determine the sex of the plant which can very from 11 to 45 years and more (Chong Seng, pers.comm. 2006; Andre, pers.comm. 2006).
Inflorescences
The inflorescences are interfoliar, lacking a covering spathe and shorter thatthe leaves. The staminate inflorescence is catkin-like, one to two metres long and generally terminal and solitay, sometimes two or three catkins may be present. The pistillate inflorescences are also one to two metres long unbranched and the flowers are borne on a zig-zagging rachilla (Wise, 1998).
Fruit
The fruit is bilobed, flattened, 40 to 50 cm long ovoid and pointed, and contanins usually one but occassionally two to four seeds. The epicarp is smooth and the mesocarp is fibours. The endosperm is thick, relatively hard, hollow and homogenous. The embryo sits in the sinus between the two lobes. During germination a tubular cotyledonary petiole develops that connects the young plant to the seed. The length of the tube is reported to reach about four metres (Uhl and Dransfield, 1987). Beaver and Chong Seng (1992) state that in the Vallee de Mai the tube may be upto 10 m long.
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References - Nature Protection Trust of Seychelles (1998). Lodoicea maldivica. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 05 May 2006. Listed as Vulnerable (VU A1cd v2.3)
- Arkive: Lodoicea maldivica
- Palm Society of Australia: Lodoicea maldivica description and photo gallery
- Hutchinson, 1959, The Families of Flowering Plants (2nd ed.)
- Fleischer-Dogley, F. (2006). Towards sustainable management of Lodoicea maldivica (Gmelin) Persoon, University of Reading, UK.
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