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The star of South Sea fantasies is an age-old globetrotter
The coconut conjures visions of distant shores, snow-white beaches and blue lagoons. It’s also an economic resource and tastes incredibly good. Sometimes, though, Queen Coconut just lets herself drop, rolls into the water and embarks on a voyage across the sea.
Director’s cut: a podcast featuring the full story
The queen presides over everything around her. Twenty metres off the ground, she spends sultry days beneath a roof of palm fronds that shelter her like giant wings.
Her Majesty has chosen an excellent spot from which to reign supreme. Surveying her realm, she gazes down over lagoons and out to sea, across marshes and deep into the jungle. A warm wind rustles in the treetops, it’s the music of the tropics.
Reposing peacefully on high, the queen ripens slowly, growing bigger, rounder, juicier every day. The well-travelled symbol of South Sea dreams has earned it – a place in seventh heaven overlooking snow-white beaches from the Caribbean to Polynesia.
What are mangos, papayas, maracujas compared with Queen Coconut? Mere lightweights. Sweet little things that grow on stalks and vines. Bananas? Crooked little fellows weighing merely 150 grams that turn brown before you know it.
Not so the queen. She tips the scales at three kilos on a good day and is always fresh as you please, even after travelling once around the world. No, the star of South Sea fantasies and epitome of castaway narratives is not easy to impress. Meet Cocos nucifera – the icon of tropical fruit.
The queen presides over everything around her. Twenty metres off the ground, she spends sultry days beneath a roof of palm fronds that shelter her like giant wings.
Her Majesty has chosen an excellent spot from which to reign supreme. Surveying her realm, she gazes down over lagoons and out to sea, across marshes and deep into the jungle. A warm wind rustles in the treetops, it’s the music of the tropics.
Reposing peacefully on high, the queen ripens slowly, growing bigger, rounder, juicier every day. The well-travelled symbol of South Sea dreams has earned it – a place in seventh heaven overlooking snow-white beaches from the Caribbean to Polynesia.
What are mangos, papayas, maracujas compared with Queen Coconut? Mere lightweights. Sweet little things that grow on stalks and vines. Bananas? Crooked little fellows weighing merely 150 grams that turn brown before you know it.
Not so the queen. She tips the scales at three kilos on a good day and is always fresh as you please, even after travelling once around the world. No, the star of South Sea fantasies and epitome of castaway narratives is not easy to impress. Meet Cocos nucifera – the icon of tropical fruit.
The queen of South Sea dreams resides in seventh heaven and overlooks snow-white beaches stretching from the Caribbean to Polynesia.
But that’s not all. Coconuts were traversing the world’s oceans even before humans appeared on the planet. The coconut is a professional traveller, a globetrotter par excellence.
Wild palms have been around for 70 million years. The first coconuts evidently grew in New Zealand, perhaps in Colombia or Australia as well. But the enterprising fruit soon decided that it wanted to see the world. It dropped onto the sand, rolled into the surf and floated off across the seven seas to the distant shores of Indonesia, to uncharted coral islands far away.
For months on end, the drupes drifted across the open sea. Coconuts can germinate even after travelling thousands of nautical miles and spending long periods of time in salt water. Once they wash ashore, they put down roots, and soon, new coconut palms begin to grow. That’s how Queen Coconut came to conquer half the world. She settled primarily in tropical latitudes – the equatorial regions of the Earth that we imagine when we’re overwhelmed by wanderlust. White sandy beaches, palm-lined lagoons. This is her magic realm. Queen Coconut, the most irresistible tropical temptation.
In southern India, the sun rises shortly after 6 a.m. Kerala’s coastline peels itself out of the heat while crows wheel over Kochi Port on the Arabian Sea. Everywhere you look: palm trees. The Indian state on the Malabar Coast even bears the queen’s name: Kerala means ‘Land of the Coconut Palms’. And Kochi is regarded as the coconut capital of the world.
You can buy the green fruit all across the city. Indians sip coconut water at virtually every beach stand. India without coconuts? That would be like Germany without potatoes, the Netherlands without tulips, the U.S. without cheeseburgers.
The coconut presides over its surroundings. A warm wind rustles in the treetops, it’s the music of the tropics.
But Queen Coconut is urbane, beloved around the world. Tahiti. Hawaii. Turquoise bays from Bali to Barbados, pristine beaches from Zanzibar to Sumbawa. The coconut palm will settle for nothing less. And so it is no surprise that we’re so smitten with Cocos nucifera.
Mighty palm trees decorated the early advertisements for ocean steamers. Few motifs were as alluring as the tall, slender tree from the tropics laden with fat fruit. In 1931, Afri-Cola was launched, in 1951, the legendary Bounty bar. Bottles and packaging featured stylised palms and lots of coconuts. Advertisers exploit the appealing motif to this day. Airlines, board shorts, cars, hotels, underwear, toothpaste, shampoo, ice cream, rum and razorblades: there’s hardly a product that hasn’t been advertised in connection with the fascinating fruit.
The green tropical fruit is omnipresent. Where would all the dream makers be without the palm and the coconut? They would be left out in the cold!
But Queen Coconut is urbane, beloved around the world. Tahiti. Hawaii. Turquoise bays from Bali to Barbados, pristine beaches from Zanzibar to Sumbawa. The coconut palm will settle for nothing less. And so it is no surprise that we’re so smitten with Cocos nucifera.
Mighty palm trees decorated the early advertisements for ocean steamers. Few motifs were as alluring as the tall, slender tree from the tropics laden with fat fruit. In 1931, Afri-Cola was launched, in 1951, the legendary Bounty bar. Bottles and packaging featured stylised palms and lots of coconuts. Advertisers exploit the appealing motif to this day. Airlines, board shorts, cars, hotels, underwear, toothpaste, shampoo, ice cream, rum and razorblades: there’s hardly a product that hasn’t been advertised in connection with the fascinating fruit.
The green tropical fruit is omnipresent. Where would all the dream makers be without the palm and the coconut? They would be left out in the cold!
People in the south of India have little time for such hyperbole. ‘Coconuts are the basis of our livelihood here’, says Arathy Kumani. ‘We utilise the whole plant, the fruit, the husks, the milk, the bark of the tree, the blossoms, the leaves. The coconut palm is endlessly useful.’
Arathy takes visitors by boat through the backwaters, a labyrinth of lagoons and creeks stretching deep into the wetlands of Kerala. The air is heavy, the jungle perspires. Two men punt the boat through the water with bamboo poles. We set off soundlessly into a world where coconuts hang in the sky.
A prized raw material and the basis for Asian cooking: The coconut has become an economic asset.
People in the south of India have little time for such hyperbole. ‘Coconuts are the basis of our livelihood here’, says Arathy Kumani. ‘We utilise the whole plant, the fruit, the husks, the milk, the bark of the tree, the blossoms, the leaves. The coconut palm is endlessly useful.’
Arathy takes visitors by boat through the backwaters, a labyrinth of lagoons and creeks stretching deep into the wetlands of Kerala. The air is heavy, the jungle perspires. Two men punt the boat through the water with bamboo poles. We set off soundlessly into a world where coconuts hang in the sky.
A prized raw material and the basis for Asian cooking: The coconut has become an economic asset.
Life in the villages follows long-established patterns. Omana Tripathi, 72, is a traditional craftswoman who has been working with coconuts for more than 50 years. Sitting on the ground in front of her hut, she plaits and knots a coconut mat with her bare hands. In India to this day, people use palm leaves to cover their huts, weave walls and make baskets.
Coconut fibres are twisted into rope, which is used to produce sofas and mattresses and to bind sacks. The coconut palm and its famous fruit are a natural resource, a building material and the basis for Asian cooking. Pressed coconut meat yields highly sought-after coconut oil, an ingredient in countless creams and beauty products. The fruit has become an economic asset.
As if that weren’t enough: children play cricket with palm fronds, and the fibres are useful for cleaning your teeth. It’s no coincidence that the coconut palm has been dubbed the ‘tree of life’ in the tropics.
The only thing is: the fruit isn’t easy to get to. We humans may have landed on the moon, invented AI and the smart refrigerator, but there is still no automated way to harvest coconuts, to remove the queen from her tree. Pure muscle power is required: you have to climb up.
In the coastal village of Arthunkal, Tanesh Diwakar, 43, stands at the base of a 20-metre-tall tree. Tanesh is a coconut tree climber, and today, he has his hands full. He thinks there are about 300,000 palms in his district of Alappuzha alone. This means he goes up and down, up and down almost all year round.
Tanesh can manage up to 12 trees in a morning, and each one often contains 20 to 30 coconuts. He shimmies up the trunk like an acrobat, without a net, without a harness, his machete in his belt. Tanesh makes around 1,000 rupees a day, the equivalent of 11 euros. ‘I’ve never been hit by a falling coconut’, he says. ‘Nor have I ever fallen from a tree.’ Luckily for him. If he ever lost his grip, a drop of 10 or 20 metres could be fatal.
The only thing is: the fruit isn’t easy to get to. We humans may have landed on the moon, invented AI and the smart refrigerator, but there is still no automated way to harvest coconuts, to remove the queen from her tree. Pure muscle power is required: you have to climb up.
In the coastal village of Arthunkal, Tanesh Diwakar, 43, stands at the base of a 20-metre-tall tree. Tanesh is a coconut tree climber, and today, he has his hands full. He thinks there are about 300,000 palms in his district of Alappuzha alone. This means he goes up and down, up and down almost all year round.
Tanesh can manage up to 12 trees in a morning, and each one often contains 20 to 30 coconuts. He shimmies up the trunk like an acrobat, without a net, without a harness, his machete in his belt. Tanesh makes around 1,000 rupees a day, the equivalent of 11 euros. ‘I’ve never been hit by a falling coconut’, he says. ‘Nor have I ever fallen from a tree.’ Luckily for him. If he ever lost his grip, a drop of 10 or 20 metres could be fatal.
Tanesh is one of many who earn a living from the coconut palm. In many factories throughout Kerala, men stand in front of spinning wheels and wooden looms producing coconut mats for agriculture and gardening. The mats help to prevent erosion and are used as geotextiles and a substitute for peat. Coconut is big business. More than 60 million tonnes are harvested globally each year and traded on the international market. Coconut milk alone generates billions in sales.
Not that you could tell by the soothing sight of these tall, slender trees crowned by beautiful fronds. But as befits a queen, the coconut palm is worth its weight in gold. There’s even a Coconut Development Board in Kerala and an official World Coconut Day.
To discover the true extent of Her Majesty’s realm, you have to travel even further. Some 500 kilometres from Kochi, in the Indian Ocean, lies the Lakshadweep archipelago – 36 palm-covered islands that seem to float in the water like white discs. Glistening beaches of white coral on which the shadows of palm trees dance. This is Queen Coconut’s natural habitat. The sea of coral has been her home for hundreds of thousands of years.
Life out here on the islands is simple. The equator isn’t far away. Reefs. Sharks. Otherwise, only the sea, fish and coconuts. Everything else has to be brought in by ship.
People walk slowly in paradise, barefoot in the sand. The sun is hot. There is plenty of time. In the evening, the moon rises over the islands, the palm trees silhouetted against the sky. The water is warm, the breeze is balmy. Listen carefully, and you’ll hear something plop onto the sand. Just the way it has for many millions of years. It’s the queen letting go and dropping to the ground.
The sea awaits. Journey, journey – to the ends of the Earth.
To discover the true extent of Her Majesty’s realm, you have to travel even further. Some 500 kilometres from Kochi, in the Indian Ocean, lies the Lakshadweep archipelago – 36 palm-covered islands that seem to float in the water like white discs. Glistening beaches of white coral on which the shadows of palm trees dance. This is Queen Coconut’s natural habitat. The sea of coral has been her home for hundreds of thousands of years.
Life out here on the islands is simple. The equator isn’t far away. Reefs. Sharks. Otherwise, only the sea, fish and coconuts. Everything else has to be brought in by ship.
People walk slowly in paradise, barefoot in the sand. The sun is hot. There is plenty of time. In the evening, the moon rises over the islands, the palm trees silhouetted against the sky. The water is warm, the breeze is balmy. Listen carefully, and you’ll hear something plop onto the sand. Just the way it has for many millions of years. It’s the queen letting go and dropping to the ground.
The sea awaits. Journey, journey – to the ends of the Earth.
Life on the islands is simple. People walk barefoot in the sand, the sun is hot, and there is plenty of time.
A listening experience
Unabridged versions of all of our stories: This way to our podcast.
A listening experience
Unabridged versions of all of our stories: This way to our podcast.
Marc Bielefeld
Author
From a balloon to the desert, out to sea, into the ice: in twelve captivating reports and podcasts, the author describes fascinating places around the world and encounters with remarkable people.
marcbielefeld.de
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Jens Görlich
Photographer
Great moments, peaceful bliss, poignant scenes: the photographer from Frankfurt always has his camera ready to capture what words can’t express.
jens-goerlich.de
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Lufthansa
Aluminium Collection
Travel companion
Hot jungle, distant coral islands, hefty coconuts – this adventure demanded plenty of stamina from our trolley too. Welcome to India!
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