At 09:24 AM 8/10/99 -0500, you wrote:
>The coconuts sold in stores usually aren't mature. The sloshing you
>hear, the milk, is liquid endosperm. It's an unusual phenomenon--the
>endosperm is multi-nuclear but has no cell walls. As the fruit matures,
>the endosperm solidifies into the "meat" of the coconut. The more milk,
>the less ripe the nut.
Does a mature seed therefore have no milk? I have heard that the endosperm
solidifies and always wondered why/how a liquid which would settle to the
bottom coats the inside so uniformly. So, all the meat in a coconut is
solid endosperm? Why the big hollow space? To make it float? Where is
the cotyledon? Is there a scutellum-like structure on the embryo? What
fruit type would a coconut fall under? (not being a true nut).
Guess I was luckier than I relalized getting a supermarket coconut to
germinate.
Dave Starrett
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