Travel Forbidden fruit The passport image was our first hint of the Garden of Eden’s forbidden fruit that we would soon view on Praslin. It depicted the coco-demer, a suggestively shaped seed that grows inside the fruit of a palm tree which is endemic to only two islands in the world – Praslin and Curieuse. The second-largest island in the Seychelles, Praslin is a 45-minute ferry ride from Mahé. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983, its Jurassic-like Vallée de Mai Nature Reserve protects more than 6,000 mature and juvenile coco-de-mer trees. Their palm leaves − the size of schooner sails − dwarfed us. It was easy to imagine a Brachiosaurus munching the greenery. We felt as if we were ants, scrambling beneath fan-shaped palm fronds hovering as high as 10-storey apartment buildings. The trees reach maturity after 20 to 40 years. Female palms grow up to 24 metres high, while males can reach 30 metres. They can live for 200 to 400 years. World’s largest seed “The female palms produce the largest seeds in the world,” said our guide Karina. She stood behind a table displaying a doublecheeked seed as large as her pelvis. “They can weigh more than 20 kilograms.” Some of the seeds sported tufts of curly hair – exactly where you’d expect them. We felt compelled to cover them with fig leaves. (The Seychelles climate is conducive to wearing little more than strategically placed fig leaves, with year-round temperatures ranging between 24 and 32 degrees Celsius.) In her hand, Karina held an elongated brown male catkin. “It dangles stiffly in the breeze to dispense its pollen. Afterwards, it falls to the ground as an empty fibrous shell,” she explained. Someone in our tour group snickered. Awoman elbowed her husband’s ribs. “I don’t mean to be naughty,” said Karina. The resulting laughter alleviated the collective embarrassment. The seed’s resemblance to human anatomy didn’t go unnoticed by 16th-century sailors, who saw it floating in the Indian Ocean. They assumed that the fruit grew on an underwater palm, so they named it coco-de-mer or sea coconut. Catkin and seed from male and female coco-de-mer palm trees Primeval leaves dwarf visitors in Vallée de Mai Nature Reserve, Praslin CSANews | WINTER 2018 | 17
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