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Journalism of Courage
Sometimes, mother nature really seems like a wacko. Take a typical tropical beachfront, for example — the frontline of the landmass as it were, which is the first to face hurricane winds blowing off the seas and howling monsoon cyclones. And what does she arrange here as her first line of defence for us landlubbers? Groves of tall lanky coconut palm trees with big rustling leaves like sails! You would imagine that these would all promptly lie down flat during the very first storm they face (try standing upright on one leg, with your arms extended on the beach in the face of a storm and you’ll know what I mean). What’s even more nuts is that these trees lean towards the howling winds and sea, as if exclaiming, ‘come, take us on, let’s see what you’ve got!’ To be sure, palm fronds do crash down thunderously during a storm, but most of them are already dead and dry anyway. So, how does this slim trunked giraffe of a tree, with a crown like a sailing ship, stay upright as mother nature huffs and puffs and blows pretty much everything else down?
Coconut palms grow 18 meters (almost 60 feet) tall — there have been reports of 100 footers even, and the fronds of their leaves can be 20 feet long. I turned to the fount of all modern knowledge — the Internet — to find out, but couldn’t find one solid reliable source that had all the answers. But there were bits and pieces of information scattered everywhere like a jigsaw puzzle which had to be put together, which is what I tried to do.
The first thing you would imagine of a tree that needs to regularly withstand gale force winds, is that it needs strongly anchored roots — that run seriously deep like the foundations of a skyscraper. But the coconut palm does not even have a tap root (akin to a single large, long nail pounded deep into the earth). It has what are called adventitious or fibrous roots — as many as 2,000 to 4,000 of them, evenly an inch thick, fanning out for usually about 6 meters (going up to even 30 meters in best conditions) around the swollen base of the stem to an average depth of 1.5 meters depending on the soil conditions, and rarely going below five meters. So, a fan or pan of relatively shallow roots is better than a single major root (with branchlets nevertheless) going deep to hold a very tall tree upright in a cyclone? Yes, apparently because coconut palms grow in sandy and comparatively loose-soil conditions where a mat of relatively shallow roots will find more purchase than a single root going deep. (Thrust a nail into loose gravel and see how easy it is to dislodge it). There’s another reason too: the water table in coastal regions is pretty high, with two distinct layers of water — fresh, rainwater lying on top of more dense sea water. The tree, of course, needs fresh water so the roots have no reason to delve deep. Though some of these adventitious roots that are at maximum
extension do delve deep, to provide additional anchorage.
So the tree may be firmly anchored to the ground, but what saves the immensely long trunk from just snapping in half in a vicious whipping wind? It appears that the coconut palm’s trunk has been designed with the same sort of in-built flexibility as that of the human spine — more, I would suspect, like a contortionist. It’s just as alarming to watch a gymnast lithely go through bendy contortions as it is to watch a coconut tree sway and bend precariously in the wind — appearing all the while as if it is hugely enjoying the experience. The tree seems to have yet another trick up its trunk: the density of the wood in the lower sections of the trunk is much greater than that higher up, thus making it bottom-heavy. This would lower the centre of gravity of the tree, increase the ‘tipping’ point and make the tree be like one of those ‘Hit Me’ punching toys that are so useful for letting off steam! A raging wind slams into a tree, it sways back and forth with élan and then springs upright again, ready for the next buffet, its leaves rustling with excitement! The tree bark, too, is smooth and slippery, enabling the wind to just slither harmlessly across and around it rather than get a grip and shove it.
And what of those sailing ship-like leaves it sports on its crown? They’re called pinnate (from feathers) and though they may be twenty feet long, they comprise thin branchless fronds like pennants which cannot really harness or hold the power of the wind in them (it just blows through). They’re also of a ‘drip tip’ design enabling rain water to run off them quickly.
So, from head to toe, the coconut palm is equipped and designed to deal with hell and high water (though it can’t tolerate waterlogging). Despite this, it would, of course, be exceedingly foolish to take shelter in a coconut grove during one of mother nature’s temper tantrums. While she may not be able to knock the tree down, you can be sure she will loosen some of those gigantic heavy fronds that have passed their ‘use by’ date — and, of course, rumble off a fusillade of coconut cannonballs on your head, for daring to be so disrespectful and foolhardy!
