第1段

For millennia, the coconut has been central to the lives of Polynesian and Asian peoples. In the western world, on the other hand, coconuts have always been exotic and unusual, sometimes rare. The Italian merchant traveller Marco Polo apparently saw coconuts in South Asia in the late 13th century, and among the mid-14th-century travel writings of Sir John Mandeville there is mention of ‘great Notes of Ynde’ (great Nuts of India). Today, images of palm-fringed tropical beaches are cliches in the west to sell holidays, chocolate bars, fizzy drinks and even romance.

数千年来，椰子一直是波利尼西亚和亚洲人生活的中心。而在西方世界，椰子一直被视为异国情调和不寻常的水果，有时甚至稀有。据说意大利商人旅行家马可·波罗在13世纪末见到了南亚地区的椰子，在约14世纪中期的约翰·曼德维尔爵士的旅行笔记中也提到了“印度的大果子”。如今，西方世界中常见的棕榈树环绕的热带沙滩的形象已成为销售假期、巧克力棒、碳酸饮料甚至浪漫的陈词滥调。

第2段

Typically, we envisage coconuts as brown cannonballs that, when opened, provide sweet white flesh. But we see only part of the fruit and none of the plant from which they come. The coconut palm has a smooth, slender, grey trunk, up to 30 metres tall. This is an important source of timber for building houses, and is increasingly being used as a replacement for endangered hardwoods in the furniture construction industry. The trunk is surmounted by a rosette of leaves, each of which may be up to six metres long. The leaves have hard veins in their centres which, in many parts of the world, are used as brushes after the green part of the leaf has been stripped away. Immature coconut flowers are tightly clustered together among the leaves at the top of the trunk. The flower stems may be tapped for their sap to produce a drink, and the sap can also be reduced by boiling to produce a type of sugar used for cooking.

通常，我们想象椰子是棕色的大炮弹，打开后可以提供甜美的白色果肉。但我们只看到了椰子的一部分，没有看到它们来自的植物。椰子椰子树干光滑修长，高达30米。这是建造房屋的重要木材来源，并且越来越多地被用作家具建筑行业濒危硬木的替代品。树干顶部有一簇叶子，每片叶子长达六米。叶子中间有坚硬的叶脉，在世界许多地方被用作绿叶被剥离后的刷子。未成熟的椰子花紧密地聚集在树干顶部的叶子之间。花茎可以被挖取其汁液来制作饮料，这种汁液也可以经过煮沸减少制成一种用于烹饪的糖。

第3段

Coconut palms produce as many as seventy fruits per year, weighing more than a kilogram each. The wall of the fruit has three layers: a waterproof outer layer, a fibrous middle layer and a hard, inner layer. The thick fibrous middle layer produces coconut fibre, ‘coir’, which has numerous uses and is particularly important in manufacturing ropes. The woody innermost layer, the shell, with its three prominent ‘eyes’, surrounds the seed. An important product obtained from the shell is charcoal, which is widely used in various industries as well as in the home as a cooking fuel. When broken in half, the shells are also used as bowls in many parts of Asia.

椰子树每年可以产生多达七十个重达一千克以上的水果。果皮有三层：防水的外层、纤维质的中间层和坚硬的内层。厚实的纤维质中间层产生椰子纤维“椰棕”，具有多种用途，在制造绳索方面尤为重要。内部坚硬的壳产生木炭，广泛用于各种工业以及家庭烹饪燃料。壳被打开后也被用作许多亚洲地区的碗。

第4段

Inside the shell are the nutrients (endosperm) needed by the developing seed. Initially, the endosperm is a sweetish liquid, coconut water, which is enjoyed as a drink, but also provides the hormones which encourage other plants to grow more rapidly and produce higher yields. As the fruit matures, the coconut water gradually solidifies to form the brilliant white, fat-rich, edible flesh or meat. Dried coconut flesh, ‘copra’, is made into coconut oil and coconut milk, which are widely used in cooking in different parts of the world, as well as in cosmetics. A derivative of coconut fat, glycerine, acquired strategic importance in a quite different sphere, as Alfred Nobel introduced the world to his nitroglycerine-based invention: dynamite.

果壳内部含有发育种子所需的营养物质（胚乳）。最初，胚乳是一种略带甜味的液体，椰子水，可以被当作饮料享用，同时也提供激素，促进其他植物更快速地生长和产量更高。随着水果成熟，椰子水逐渐凝固成洁白、富含脂肪的可食用果肉。干燥的椰肉被制成椰子油和椰子奶，在世界各地的烹饪中广泛使用，同时也被用于化妆品。椰子脂肪的衍生物甘油，在完全不同的领域具有战略重要性，因为阿尔弗雷德·诺贝尔引入了基于硝化甘油的炸药：炸药。

第5段

Their biology would appear to make coconuts the great maritime voyagers and coastal colonizers of the plant world. The large, energy-rich fruits are able to float in water and tolerate salt, but cannot remain viable indefinitely; studies suggest after about 110 days at sea they are no longer able to germinate. Literally cast onto desert island shores, with little more than sand to grow in and exposed to the full glare of the tropical sun, coconut seeds are able to germinate and root. The air pocket in the seed, created as the endosperm solidifies, protects the embryo. In addition, the fibrous fruit wall that helped it to float during the voyage stores moisture that can be taken up by the roots of the coconut seedling as it starts to grow.

它们的生物学特性似乎使椰子成为植物世界中伟大的海上航行者和沿海殖民者。这种大型、能量丰富的水果能够在水中漂浮并耐受盐分，但不能无限期地保持活力；研究表明，大约在海上漂浮110天后，它们将无法再发芽。当被抛到荒岛海岸上时，椰子种子能够生根发芽，尽管只有少量的沙土和暴露在热带阳光下。种子内的气泡在胚乳凝固时被形成，保护胚芽。此外，帮助它在航行中浮动的纤维果壁储存了可以被椰子幼苗的根吸收的水分。

第6段

There have been centuries of academic debate over the origins of the coconut. There were no coconut palms in West Africa, the Caribbean or the east coast of the Americas before the voyages of the European explorers Vasco da Gama and Columbus in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. 16th century trade and human migration patterns reveal that Arab traders and European sailors are likely to have moved coconuts from South and Southeast Asia to Africa and then across the Atlantic to the east coast of America. But the origin of coconuts discovered along the west coast of America by 16th century sailors has been the subject of centuries of discussion. Two diametrically opposed origins have been proposed: that they came from Asia, or that they were native to America. Both suggestions have problems. In Asia, there is a large degree of coconut diversity and evidence of millennia of human use – but there are no relatives growing in the wild. In America, there are close coconut relatives, but no evidence that coconuts are indigenous. These problems have led to the intriguing suggestion that coconuts originated on coral islands in the Pacific and were dispersed from there.