Hi yakky,
It appears that Chicago is the closest place for you to see a living
Coco-de-Mer palm tree!
Chicago is 1275 miles from NY, and it is 2060 miles, from New York to
Miami. Therefore, Chicago?s Garfield Conservatory is 785 miles closer
than Miami. (Give or take a few miles.) However, I was unable to
locate a Coco-de-Mer palm tree in Miami. It sounds like you may know
of one there, but if you?d like to see the real tree, then Chicago
will save you some traveling time!
http://www.hm-usa.com/distance/usa.html
The Garfield Conservatory has one of the largest Coco-de-Mer trees ?in captivity?.
?In 1960, during an expedition to Sir Lanka, Garfield Park
horticulturist Robert Van Tress obtained a Double Coconut seed. Upon
his return to Chicago, the seed was wrapped in a heating coil and it
germinated where the plant grows in the Palm House.
Our Double Coconut is probably the largest such plant growing under
glass in the world. Incidentally even after 40 years our Double
Coconut is still too immature to determine whether it is male or
female.?
http://www.garfield-conservatory.org/gpca_news_3_copy.htm
Other USA locations: ?San Francisco's conservatory joins a handful in
other cities, including Atlanta, Honolulu and St. Louis, hoping to
grow a coco de mer palm.? These locations seem to have a seed pod, but
have not yet grown a tree.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/05/26/BA12204.DTL&type=news
Singapore Botanical Gardens has some coco-de-mer palms
http://www.palmsoftheworld.com/lod.htm
According to this site, you can only see Coco-de-Mer trees, in
Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, 1600 km. East of
Africa.
http://www.outofbounds.com/html/seychelles.html
This book, ?A Fragile Eden?, by Rosemary Wise, found on Amazon.com
also states the Coco-de-Mer is found only in the Seychelles. If you
have a free account (Credit card required to be on file) with
Amazon.com, you can use the ?Search Inside the Book? feature to see
the wuote here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0691048177/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-1326712-2390244#reader-page
This Audubon.org article also confirms the Seychelles as being the
only location to have Coco-de-mer trees.
http://magazine.audubon.org/travel/
About the Coco-de-Mer palm:
?Its fruit, weighing up to 22 kg and measuring up to 50 cm across,
contains the double coconut, which is the largest seed in the world,
and is so called because it has two lobes each resembling a coconut
Coconut
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Liliopsida
Order: Palmales
Family: Arecaceae
Genus: Cocos
Species: nucifera
Binomial name
Cocos nucifera L.
The coconut palm (Cocos nucifera L.), is a member of the Family
Arecaceae (palm family). It is the only species classified in the
genus Cocos.
It is an example of a sea-bean or drift seed, which is a seed that is
designed to be dispersed by the sea. It is also called the coco fesse,
sea coconut and Seychelles nut.
The sailors who first saw the double coconut floating in the sea
imagined that it resembled a woman's disembodied buttocks and
genitalia. This fanciful association is reflected in one of the
plant's archaic botanical names, Lodoicea callypige Comm. ex J.
St.-Hil., in which callipyge is from Greek words meaning 'beautiful
rump'. Other botanical names used in the past include Lodoicea
sechellarum Labill. and Lodoicea sonneratii (Giseke) Baill. Until the
true source of nut was discovered in 1768 ?
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Coco%20de%20mer
Some good pictures of the palm tree in its natural habitat
http://www.pps.gov.sc/enviro/html/valle_de_mai.html
More information on the Coco-de-Mer palm:
http://www.conservatoryofflowers.org/plantcollections/archive_fall2002.htm
Hope this helps you! Enjoy the trip to the Windy City!
Regards,
crabcakes
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