The Mystery of Maldive Coconut
(Lodoicea maldivica)
Prepared by Ali Rilwan, Bluepeace
Bluepeace Special Report, May 2004
The natives of the Maldive islands have heard
of the local name of Maldive coconut, as Thaavah
Kaashi, but mysteriously many at present are
not even aware of the shape of it. The local
name Thaavah Kaashi has been in the Dhivehi
vocabulary for centuries and hard shell of the
Maldive coconut is still used in local medicine
for sexual enhancement purposes.
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Maldive
Coconut (Lodoicea maldivica) |
The Russian author Nikolai Osipov in 1985,
in his article Sailing Seven Seas: Great Seafarers
stated centuries before in the Maldive Islands,
there was very strange global trade. The seller
didn’t know exactly what he was selling,
and the buyers didn’t know really what
they were buying. What was sold and bought were
very strange gifts of the sea, which the natives
of these islands found from time to time, washed
off on their beaches or picked up from the sea.
Even the British Hydrographer of East India
Company, James Horsburgh Esq. had found them.
According to Nikolai, the islanders thought
they were fruits from mysterious tree which
grew at the bottom of the sea. It was even said
that the Sea God sent them as gifts to men,
and that they brought good fortune to the person
who found them. These islanders boggled the
imagination, because of the humongous size,
almost two feet thickness.
Everyone wanted a share in the good fortune.
But the Sultans of the islands set up strict
control over the gathering of the strange fruits.
The mysterious gifts of the sea found themselves
wealthy buyers.
It was believed that there was a miraculous
power in the fruits that could protect from
poisoning. Many Indian Rajahs, who went in fear
of being poisoned by their courtiers, ordered
their court masters to make goblets of the hard
shell of the kernel and drank only from them.
The Sultans of the Maldives did everything possible
to keep this superstition alive and sold his
merchandise to the Indian Rajahs at a fabulously
high price- almost the weight of gold. But as
the centuries passed the miraculous lucky charm
was gradually forgotten. At that time, the natives
of the Maldive Islands and Indian Rajahs were
only peoples ignorant of this strange fruit
from the sea. The western botanists were also
mysteriously ignorant of it, as a matter fact,
it was name as Locoicoa maidivica not as Locoicoa
sechellarum.
According to Orta these were widely believed
to had originally grown in the Maldive Islands
at a time when they still formed part of the
mainland of India and, when the palms became
very old, they must had dropped off and become
buried in the earth. When the land was flooded
by the ocean, the coconuts remained buried under
the water and from time to time during storms
it would float to surface, usually joined together
in pairs and natives of the Maldives would collect
them.
However, Dr. Orta provided some important information
on the use of the Maldive coconut in the Maldive
Islands. According to him, the natives of the
these islands liked to drink the sweet juice
of these Maldive coconuts with fish and rice,
and the flesh was believed to provide a good
cure against poison and “malignant fever”,
as well as cure for a wide variety of illness,
including colic, paralysis. The shell was commonly
made into goblets engrave gold, silver and precious
stones.
According to Orata, the Queen of Portugal ordered
a quantity of the nuts to be sent to her every
year, and the Emperor Rudlf II said to have
offered 4,000 forms for a single nut. Orta further
stated that any person who, finding a sea coconut
on the beaches in the Maldive Islands, did not
immediately take it to the king was punished
by death.
In fact, these strange gifts of the sea were
so called Maldive Coconuts or Lodoicoa maidivica.
Locoicoa maidivica is native to Seychelles in
the Indian Ocean. This fruit is also know as
coco-de mer , Sea coconut or Double coconut
too. There are no historical or archaeological
evidence saying these coco-de-mer palms ever
grew in the Maldive Islands, unlike coconut
they do not germinate once tossed out upon the
shore. They are destroyed by the salt water
with which the sand on the shore is saturated.
The Seychelles were uninhabited until fairly
recent times only in the 1770’s. French
planters and their slaves settled down. However,
these islands were first sighted at the beginning
of the 16th century, by Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese
navigator, but the Portuguese did not attempt
to settle there.
Long before the Seychelles was settled, this
palm grow on the coastal areas, where the fruit
that falls from the palm sometimes float across
the Indian Ocean and were picked up in the Maldivian
waters.
Maldive coconut, Lodoicea maldivica, this very
large nut looks like two coconuts joined together,
side by side. Maldive coconut has been classified
very close to coconut, but is not related to
the coconut. It belongs to the Borassoid group
of palms. Maldive coconut is the world’s
largest and heaviest seed, a single seed may
be 12 inches long, nearly three feet in circumference
and weigh 20kg. The Maldive coconut palms grow
only on a small island named Praslin in the
Seychelles. Plants of these nuts are tender
and very slow-growing, the nut takes a year
to germinate and another year to form its first
leaf, and it can attain heights of 100 feet
and leaf blades to 20 feet in length and 12
feet in diameter. Ripe interior (endosperm)
of coco-de-mer is normally like jelly, not firm
and white like cocos nucifera (coconut). Maldive
coconut is also said to be a powerful aphrodisiac
still used in Asian herbal medicine.
In conclusion, even though Lodoicea maldivica,
never existed or never grew in the Maldive Islands.
It could argue that the Maldives deserves the
first name or surname of the Lodoicea maldivica
for the historical reasons, namely peoples of
these islands initially introduced the nut globally
and locally using it in food and medicine for
centuries.
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