sea coconutn.
/ˈsiː ˌkəʊkənʌt/, U.S. /ˈsi ˌkoʊkəˌnət/ 1. The coco de mer, Lodoicea maldivica; the fruit or seed of this.In quot. 1720, perhaps confused with the common coconut, Cocos nucifera.
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1720 H. Cornwall Observ. Several Voy. India 40 T. and U. being the Southermost of the Laccadeva's, afford dry'd Salt-fish and Sea Cocoanuts, with other Necessaries.
1779 Philos. Trans. 1778 (Royal Soc.) 68 178 The sea cocoa-nut, which has long been erroneously considered as a marine production..is now discovered to be the fruit of a palm with flabelliform leaves, which grows abundantly on the small islands..called..by the French Les Isles de Sechelles.
1834 Trans. Royal Asiatic Soc. 3 App. p. lxxxix A double Sea Cocoa-nut, in the husk, from the Seychelle Islands.
1864 Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 14 443 The occasional fall of the ponderous fruit renders a passage among the Sea Cocoa-nuts a somewhat dangerous affair except in calm weather.
1902 Outing Mar. 715/2 Seeds are indeed a mysterious study, from the sea cocoa-nut, that weighs some forty pounds, to the little nutlets of some orchid, of which a hundred thousand will not weigh an ounce.
1991 Choice Mar. 59/1 One of the highlights here is a visit to the Vallée de Mai forest of Praslin where you can find the coco-de-mer, a sea coconut or double coconut a foot long.
2. The cannonball mahogany, Xylocarpus granatum (family Meliaceae), a tall tree of intertidal and estuarine mangroves from East Africa to northern Australia, with a distinctive reddish flaky bark; the large woody fruit of this tree, containing numerous seeds which are dispersed by water. Now rare.
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the world > plants > particular plants > cultivated or valued plants > particular timber trees or shrubs > non-British timber trees > [noun] > tropical > mahogany tree
mahogany tree1747
mahogany1759
Honduras mahogany1786
sea coconut1841
1841 Baptist Missionary Mag. Apr. 81/2 One tree here, bears a large fruit like a cocoa nut, and is called by the Burmans the ‘sea cocoa nut’, (Xylocarpus Cyranatum) being found only on the margin of the sea.
1850 F. Mason Nat. Productions Burmah 168 Sea cocoanut. This is not the famous Cocos des mer of the Seychelles..; but a tree very common in the mangrove swamps.
1919 W. Winn Timbers & their Uses i. 88 The cannon ball tree, Xylocarpus granatum, also known as Sea Coconut, occurs in Burma, Ceylon, Fiji Islands.
3. The fruit of the bussu palm, Manicaria saccifera, which has a hard and very rough outer shell containing two or three seeds, and may be dispersed by water. Also called sea apple. rare.
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1895 Nature 21 Nov. 64/1 In the West Indies the ripe fruits of a palm unknown in the Greater Antilles are..washed ashore... These are locally called ‘Sea apples’ or ‘Sea cocoa-nuts’.
1913 Bull. Misc. Information (Royal Bot. Gardens, Kew) No. 10. 369 Manicaria nuts are very abundant. The islanders call them ‘sea-cocoanuts’..and sometimes eat them, though they are considered..to be indigestible.
2011 D. Witherington & D. Witherington Living Beaches Georgia & Carolinas 270 Sea coconuts (Manicaria saccifera) grow on the bussu palm in singles, twos, or threes within a brown, lumpy husk.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2013; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1720