Growth Cocos nucifera

[Kai]

Thought I'd start a topic about my Cocos nucifera I brought back from Suriname as a nut.

First picture:

[Kai]

Next...

[Kai]

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[Kai]

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[Kai]

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[Kai]

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[Kai]

And of coarse how it's looking now...

Greetings,

Kai

[brodklop]

Great photo Kai. Did you do anything special to get this to germinate. How long did it take to shoot. I recently got a Golden Malay seed and as yet no sign of life.

Good luck with the coconut

Brod

[surgeon83]

Looks great!  I tried sprouting coconuts without luck.  I am also interested in the time course from sprouting to its current state.

Brian

[fastfeat]

Nice shots there Kai!

I've only sprouted a few. Seemed to take about 2 months or so. I started 'em in 3 gal/12l pots and put against hot west wall last Summer. Got about half of the ten or so seeds to sprout. Others might have, but alas, ex-landlord dumped 'em all in the pond when I got evicted.

[realarch]

Kai, the coconut in that pot looks so cool and a such great topic of conversation. Good luck with it.

Tim

[Kai]

(brodklop @ Feb. 06 2008,21:39)

QUOTE

Great photo Kai. Did you do anything special to get this to germinate. How long did it take to shoot. I recently got a Golden Malay seed and as yet no sign of life.

Good luck with the coconut

Brod

Hi Brod,

I just picked the coconut up from under a tree and laid it down on the front perch. Only 2 days later I saw something sprouting and started taking pictures. This was on my summervacation in South America. The temperature was about 35 Celcius and there was a lot of moisture in the air (a typical rainforest climate)

I must have been lucky to pick up the right one.

Kai

[Kai]

(surgeon83 @ Feb. 06 2008,22:56)

QUOTE

Looks great!  I tried sprouting coconuts without luck.  I am also interested in the time course from sprouting to its current state.

Brian

Hi Brian,

The first signs of germination (about 2 days before the first picture) started on July 25th.

Currently it's producing it's 5th leaf, my fastest growing palmseedling yet!

Kai

[surgeon83]

Not bad growth at all for 6 months.  They sell coconuts that size for $70 USD in my area!! (although they do go down to $35 in the fall).

[Kai]

(surgeon83 @ Feb. 08 2008,02:20)

QUOTE

Not bad growth at all for 6 months.  They sell coconuts that size for $70 USD in my area!! (although they do go down to $35 in the fall).

Wow, I think that's very expensive! Here in Holland you can buy them as a houseplant at almost every gardencentre, even ikea (furniture warehouse) for no more than 6 or 7 euro's. These plants are very likely to die as a houseplant for they have been grown in a very hot and moist glasshouse with a lot of light. So if you put them in a relatively dark room with temps dropping to sometimes 15 degreeds celsius, they will die. With a lot of effort I have been able to keep one alive for more than 3 years now (my other coconut). Here's a picture:

[Kai]

Today I thought it might be a good idea to re-pot the coconut. Reason number 1: it's not a deep pot. Reason number 2: The pot looks like crap. I didn't think there would be many roots yet, because coconuts produce roots after they shot out their first leaf (is what I believe). But this is what I got to see:

[Walter John]

Great stuff Kai, it must be very satisfying for you, this is a great thread, thank you.

[fastfeat]

Kai--

Nice job there with that three-year old; no small feat!

[Kai]

Thanks! Anybody else trying to grow a coconut indoors? Is it possible to get it to flower indoors? Then I'll need to cut a hole in the ceiling I'm affraid...

[Really full garden]

Here in Guatemala the seeds actually begin to sprout while still attached to the tree and drop to the ground with a leaf spiking.

[TikiRick]

Hey Kai,

My favorite palm! Here in South Florida, they drop beneath the mother plant and if left in the heat and humidity, will begin to germinate in weeks. Living on the waterway, I often see coconuts floating by perfectly germinated....a real "Old Florida" feel.

I sent a bunch of germinated coconuts up to my family last May. They ranged from your size all the way up to about 6 foot overall including the tallest fronds. I wrapped wet newspaper around the bare roots, put each coconut into a plastic bag with some light water, and sealed it up for humidity. I laid all of them down and they arrived without any problems.

My family potted them all up in containers for around the pool for all summer and brought them indoors before the first frost. Unfortunately, most of them have died indoors. They have to have high humidity (something not available with indoor heat up north), bright sunlight (also not available during the winter months with so much cloud cover), and it does seem that mealy bugs attack them.

It is difficult to keep a coconut alive for extended periods of time even in hotel, condo, or office buildings since they require such exact environments....but there is always hope!  Good luck with your northern coconut!

[Kai]

After repotting, growth just continued. The newest leaf is just out!

[Kai]

Here's a little update on the growth of my little indoor coconut:

[kristof p]

Hi Kai,

very good work and a very beautifull Cocos you have there....

i think you have one of the oldest surviving and good looking Coconuts at our latitude! (exept maybe some growing in tropical greenhouses).

most die in there first year indoors...

[Kai]

Thanks Kristof!

I think you mean the one on this picture.

The one with which I started this thread is from juli 2007 (not so very old), grown from a coconut I took back from Suriname.

Somehow they seem to thrive in my living room. I'm starting to suspect that it might have something to do with my aquarium from which a gallon of water damps away each day... Though the aquarium stands for only about a year, so all the years before that they've done without the extra humidity.

Putting it close to a large window where it is sure to catch as many sunbeams as posible is probably the trick.

Cheers,

Kai

[Palmə häl′ik]

sweet.

[Kai]

Hi guys!

Here's another update on my indoor coconut. Now the days are getting longer again, it's growing like a maniac... Pushing out leaf after leaf.

I've trimmed it a little of old leafbases and now it looks much more tidy to me. I hope this doesn't harm the palm in any way, but I think it will be okay...

[PalmatierMeg]

Beautiful, Kai. I can tell you baby it.

[Jeff in St Pete]

Kai, your coconut looks just as nice as any others that size growing here in Costa Rica. Great job!

In the last year and a half, I've planted over 100 sprouting coconuts at the edge of the beach in front of the property here. Today, there are only about 10 left because people keep pulling them up. They yank them out of the ground, hold them by the sprout and whack then against a tree trunk until they split open. The coconut meat is eaten and the poor shoot is pulled from the husk and tossed on the ground to die. I find them discarded like this all the time. I've planted a few of these coconut shoots (with roots attached) and they still grow even after the husk has been ripped away from them!

[Z4Devil]

KAI! I can not believe what I see. Incredible! What fantastic fotos you have from such a difficult growing plant. Well done, my respect.

May you let us know what special conditions you are given to it? Coconut palms need very much sun and a high humidity.

I am growing a C. nucifera, too. I would say it has the level of your foto in the posting of Mar 18 2008, 07:49 PM .

Fantastic plant, much luck and much further leaves.

Best regards, Verena

[Kai]

Hi Jeff,

So I guess it would be safe to discard of the husk of my coconut palm? On the other side, I like the sight of it still being attached. It reminds me of the time I bought it as a very young seedling.

It breaks my heart to hear about these palm-torturers pulling coconut seedlings out of the ground just for some cocosmeat. Everytime I visit a country where coconuts grow I allways have a chat with some coconut palms and stroke their leafs a bit No matter how big or small, they are just só beautifull! I can't imagine anyone killing one! It's a terrible crime and the perpetraters should be planted shoulder-deep in a swampy area full with mosquitos and leaches!

Hi Verena,

Kind of like a large Lytocarium right?

This palm has been standing in front of a large window facing the south all it's life. The first few years I had it, I lived in an appartement in Amsterdam where it got quite hot in the summers because of a whole row of windows and a flat roof. It's allways been placed close to the windows so it could catch as much sunlight as possible. After some years I moved to Zeeland (in the south of Holland) and feared for it's survival because at the time of moving it wasn't very warm outside (about 9 C I think). So the coconut was the very first thing going into the new living room, and it never suffered any damage from about 5-6 hours of this agonizing cold. Luckily in my new house I have another large window facing the south so this was of course it's new place for the years to come.

The humidity in my living room is a bit above average because I have a large seawater aquarium where everyday about 2 liters of water damps out into the room. This seems to do the trick I think. About warmth: I don't allow temperatures to get below 18 C and in daytime it often gets a lot warmer when the sun is shining in. I'm just like many of my plants: heat-loving so that's for our mutual advantage I guess.

[Z4Devil]

Kai wrote:

Kind of like a large Lytocarium right?

100% agree, Kai.

Kai wrote:

This palm has been standing in front of a large window facing the south all it's life. The first few years I had it, I lived in an appartement in Amsterdam where it got quite hot in the summers because of a whole row of windows and a flat roof. It's allways been placed close to the windows so it could catch as much sunlight as possible.

Perfect conditions. I see you are take care in doing cultivate the Coconut baby. That generates a lot of sympathy.

Kai wrote:

[...]

Luckily in my new house I have another large window facing the south so this was of course it's new place for the years to come.

[...]

Ah ja ... luck for the palm, luck for you, luck for us.

Kai wrote:

The humidity in my living room is a bit above average because I have a large seawater aquarium where everyday about 2 liters of water damps out into the room. This seems to do the trick I think. About warmth: I don't allow temperatures to get below 18 C and in daytime it often gets a lot warmer when the sun is shining in. I'm just like many of my plants: heat-loving so that's for our mutual advantage I guess.

Kai, you are to be begrudged, seriously. Okay, an aquarium I do not have ... that´s why I am "armed" with a professional vaporisator every evening. After giving humidity to my palms my arms mutate to those of a ringer.

Please keep us updated in your C. nucifera. It is a plasure to see it´s growth ... and it gives a lot of hope for other enthusiastics of this plant.

Love, Verena

Edited May 12, 2009 by Z4Devil

[Kai]

Thank you for your kind encouragements Verena, it's very much appreciated and makes me want to treat my palms even better!

In fact, I'm on the lookout for some other coconut varieties for some time now, but of course those are hard to come by here in Holland. So I'm asking everybody who reads this and has some nice, ready to sprout coconuts for the trouble of sending me one or two. Of course I'll pay for the shipping costs. I'm especially interested in the smallest varieties and yellow and red leaf stalks make me go crazy! Also a Jamaican tall is one of my big wishes, but I believe these are large seeds and might be even more costly to send half around the world... Still I'm very much considering even if the nut gets quite expensive...

Maybe somebody here has some tips on how to come by viable coconuts, I would very much appreciate it!

Cheers,

Kai

[Z4Devil]

You are welcome, Kai - everytime.

You are looking for various (other) species of Coconut or am I mistaken?

The general ("normal") Coconuts I would like to send you. Never ask me where they are from ... our supermarkets are full of them. If this brings you forward and is what you like, let me know.

Love, Verena

[Kai]

Whooohoooh! I just got myself another coconut palm! I bought this one at the local supermarket and put it on a warm spot on top of some soil. Today I put it in a pot...

Does annyone have an idea of what variety this might be? Thanks a lot!