Arecaceae
13-Coconut Drupe
![[FMP-field: image]](../picts/Arecaceae/13-Cocos%20nucifera%20fruit.jpg)
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This is a fresh coconut in longitudinal section (made with a machete!). The fruit of a coconut is a drupe, in which the mesocarp is fibrous. The "nut" you buy at the grocery store is the "pit", and the white stuff that you eat is the endosperm. Coconut trees usually grow near the ocean, some of the ripe coconuts fall into the ocean (or are blown there by hurricanes), and then they are carried along on the ocean currents, where eventually at least some of them wash up some other tropical beach, where they germinate. |