Palm trees have been more than just part of the coastal landscape in Mexico. They’re a source of food, work, shade and even housing.
It’s a huge ship, almost as big as the ones that came in near Ixtapa to pick up the Montgomery plant’s bananas. However, this one is nearing a point way south, near Cabo Corrientes. To the people of the town of Pisota, its arrival meant a time of celebration, fiesta time, with dances, fairs and even a circus also arriving by sea. However, for the party to begin an exchange had to be made; the men on board were looking for the coconut oil that the locals harvested in exchange for a few pesos. This money had enabled about 60 families to get together in that one little town by 1940.
Palm trees seem to have been part of the landscape forever, but that’s not so. The Nao de China (a ship) played not only an important part in the bonanza felt by Bahia de Banderas thanks to the coconut oil palm, but in that of Colima in their production of coconut palm. Even Las Palmas, located a ways past Ixtapa, is named after the Royal Palms that surround it thanks to that ship. That Spanish ship brought palm trees to the new continent and took Mexican vanilla with them to the Asian continent. The exotic beauty of these trees attracted the attention of the sailors, as did their fruits. Some of them have the large, round fruits filled with sweetish water and the others the little fruits with the oily pulp. Palm trees thrived in American climates so much that just a few seeds escaping from the ship were enough for the entire coast to become populated with the different species. They spread out almost like a plague throughout the entire territory. This plant family can adapt to just about any environment. Their best performance is in places where the temperatures range between 65 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit, but they can take cooler temperatures although with slower growth. They also adapt easily to different types of soil. Although 60% or greater humidity is imperative for their good health, they can resist many weeks near 30%.
Doña Eloisa Andrade recalls nostalgically the times when she harvested oil coconuts; when there was money in Pisota. After the sale came the celebrations: “Wow, the dances were amazing, just cheek-to-cheek! Everything was so pretty, there were cock fights, clothes on sale and the circus would come to town”, she recalls.
Palm trees not only define our coastal landscape, they are also a good source of income and food. The states of Colima and Guerrero still market coconut water and its derivatives: coconut candy, oil, and even glycerin. “First we broke it, then removed the pulp and ground it to make “tostadas” or we used it to make “atole” (a corn based hot drink); that’s the famous “coala”, Doña Eloisa explained. Near Puerto Vallarta, however, the oil palm has stopped offering its goods.
Coconuts? Colima’s the Place to Go
The coconut palm (Cocos nucifera) is one single species with many varieties. They’re primarily differentiated by the color of their fruit: yellow or green. The plants also have a different diameter to their trunks. Their common characteristic is that their fruit has a similar taste, sweet, meaty and juicy. They’re cultivated in coastal areas thanks to their economic importance.
Coconut flowers are polygamomonoecious, with female and male flowers in the same plant. They flower continuously and the female flowers are the ones that produce the seeds or coconuts. The coconut is a very resistant seed and it can propagate at great distances by marine currents. You can see coconuts floating along the coasts of the Sea of Norway that will still germinate under the right conditions.
The coconut palm is one of the most useful plants and is exploited in a myriad of ways. The dry pulp is called copra and contains 60-70% lipids. From the copra you can get the oil that is used in the production of margarine and soap. The wood can be used for construction as well. The inhabitants of Polynesia, Kiribati and the Marshall islands eat the fresh sap from the coconut tree. They also ferment it and preserve it as an alcoholic drink called ‘toddy’. The fibers surrounding the coconut fruit are used to make brushes, mattresses and rope. In the Caribbean isles, they open the immature nuts with a machete to extract the liquid for a refreshing drink. This water can be kept within the closed fruit for up to 8 months and still conserve its properties.
According to an article published by Juan Carlos Reyes Garza, the coconut palm arrived in Colima around the end of the fifties and was readily cultivated and marketed. One of the products was an alcoholic drink (firewater) that competed with Spanish liquors for a time. The competition was so strong that its production was banned by the Spaniards. Colima is one of the largest coconut producers in America today.
Oil and Shade
The coconut oil palm, also known as “guacoyul” (Orbignya guacuyul) is very similar to the coconut palm. It grows to about 90 feet, but its leaves are much longer; some almost 15 feet long. Its leaves are what are used to make palm frond roofs – “palapas”. This species can be found intermittently all down the Pacific coast, from Nayarit to Oaxaca. It grows in dense palm forests. Its fruit looks like oval-shaped, yellowish, fibrous nuts up to 3 inches long. They contain from one to three seeds hidden in an oily pulp.
However, the coconut palm gives more than shade with its ‘palapas’; coconut oil production was one of the most important economic activities in the area for over 50 years. People would wait until the nut dried out and then broke it to sell to companies that made soap, tanning oil and cooking oil.
The Shining Star
The Royal Palm (Roystonea regia) is also found near Puerto Vallarta. It’s a species that stands out due to the beauty of its foliage. Cubans show off that this beautiful ornamental plant gives their fields their character, but we even have a town named after it: Las Palmas. The plant can grow up to 45 feet, but its trunk doesn’t have as many protuberances as its cousins. It grows in both flat and mountainous regions, preferably in fertile and humid terrain, like on river banks, streams and gullies. It doesn’t grow in savannas or in soils with a lot of sulfates. It can also be found in Florida, Santo Domingo and Haiti as well as many other countries (Roig, 1974).
Royal palm is used to decorate parks, highways and avenues thanks to its svelte beauty. However, it’s also a very useful plant. It has emollient properties, its root is a diuretic and it can be used to expel kidney stones, for diabetes, atherosclerosis, cramps, asthma, and colds, to improve circulation, to stop hemorrhaging, for leprosy, and malaria and to treat sprains. In Puerto Rico it’s also used for stomach problems and to heal wounds. The wood is used to build houses in rural areas, for pens, canes and containers for agricultural products. It’s very valuable for bee keepers, because its flowers are very popular with the little insects (Ordext, 1952). Its fruit, core or “heart” is eaten by numerous people in salads or other preparations. In many countries, when the head of the palm is cut off, the cavity left behind develops a certain type of beetle larvae that is considered a delicacy.
