"In March 1521, after escaping the thieves in the place they christened Ladrones Island (Guam, much the same now as it was then - RP), they (Magellan & his scurvy crew) sailed toward Samar and anchored on an island south of Samar called Suluan. 

Magellan ordered tents set up by the beach. While they were resting there and fetching fresh water, a boat with nine men on board arrived. Magellan offered food and drink to the men who were ornately dressed and later presented some fabulous (to him) gifts to what he presumed were heathen primitive natives. The gifts consisted of red caps, mirrors, combs, bells and other trinkets. In return, the men gave Magellan fish, a jar (earthenware or perhaps even Oriental ceramic vessel) with palm wine they called “vraca” and bananas which Pigafetta, who was seeing them for the first time, described as "figs more than a foot long." (Probably the local variety of cooking plantains - tinduk - RP). They were also given smaller better-tasting bananas and two coconuts.

Due to the language barrier, the men spoke in sign language and made it understood that they would return in four days with rice, other types of food, and, again, coconuts. So Pigafetta describes the coconut and its uses in great detail:

"...Just as we have bread, wine, oil and vinegar in their several kinds, these people have the aforesaid things which come only from the palm trees. Wine is obtained from these in the following manner. They make an aperture into the heart of the tree at its top which is called palmito, from which is distilled along the tree a liquor like white must, which is sweet with a touch of greenness. Then they take canes as thick as a man's leg, by which they draw off this liquor, fastening them to the tree from the evening until next morning, and from morning to the evening so that the said liquor comes little by little.

This tree bears a fruit named cocho*, which is as large as the head, and its first husk is green and two fingers thick, in which are found certain fibers of which those people make the ropes by which they bind their boats. Under this husk is another, very hard and thicker than that of a nut. The second husk they burn and make of it a powder that is useful to them. And under said husk there is a white marrow of a finger's thickness, which they eat fresh with meat and fish, as we do bread, and it has the flavor of an almond, and if it were dried it would make bread. (Poor Pigafetta had had no fresh-baked bread for about a year).

From the center of this marrow there flows a water which is clear and sweet and very refreshing, and when it stands and settles it congeals and becomes like an apple. And when they wish to make oil, they take this fruit called cocho and put it in the sun and let said marrow putrefy and ferment in the water, then they boil it, and it becomes oil like butter.

When they wish to make vinegar, they let the water of the said cocho ferment and put it in the sun, which turns it into vinegar like white wine. From the said fruit milk can also be made, as we proved by experience. For we scraped the marrow, then mixed it with its own water, and being passed through a cloth it became like goat's milk. This kind of palm is like the palm tree that bears dates, but not so knotty. And two of these trees will sustain a family of ten persons."

Source: Ambeth Ocampo - Philippine Inquirer

• Magellan sailed on to Homonhon island, then to Limasawa, where he arranged the first Christian Mass (and set in train many of the troubles of the Philippines over the next half a millenium). He also landed in Cebu City, and was killed in a fracas on Mactan island with Chief Lapu-Lapu - after whom a prized fish (the whole grouper family) and a small city have been named. (Although the people who live there still call it O-pon).
  
• Pigafetta calls the nut cocho - this doesn't sound like the 'coco' (Spanish) = 'monkey' often given as the origin of 'coconut'.  (Magellan was Portuguese and Pigafetta a Venetian). Perhaps in the local Suluan/Samar dialect, the word really was 'kotcho'.  Or perhaps, being an Italian, Pigafetta was just used to the hard 'ch'.  
  
• Similaly 'vraca' wine doesn't sound at all like the modern 'tuba' - I suspect that word came from Mexico - the Spanish were masters in denigrating the 'Indios' of the Philippines (who looked exactly like the Aztecs and Incas they'd previously decimated with the help of the Great God, smallpox) and positive pedagogues in imposing their own language. To this day, Filipinos count ordinary things in their own dialects, but 'alien' things, like cash, dates, times, and so on, in Spanish.

Back to Top

It also makes mangrove exploring a great deal easier.

Lo and behold, there they were, wild coconuts, all around us among the ordinary domesticated ones.

Long thin husks, the nuts about the size of a goose egg.  

Unfortunately, from the vantage point of the walkway, and after tramping around in mangrove mud, the trees themselves, and their crowns about 30ft above us, were quite unreachable. 

The 'leaf rings' on the trunk are much closer together than on domesticated coconuts, so presumably these grow more slowly. They're only average height, but may be much older than the intermixed domesticated trees.

Everything else about these trees looked much the same as ordinary domesticated coco palms, but maybe they could do with a closer look.

We recovered just one rotten nut:

   
 It was a start.

Back to Top

Senorita (Dwarf)
in a house yard

Kuyamis     
                                                                                                                                 
Local growers refuse to grow modern 'dwarf' varieties of coconut, for a very canny reason - local kids would find them easier to steal.

Back to Top