Saturday, November 12, 2022

The Largest Seed in the World



Since I wrote about the smallest seed in the world ( click here for that ), I thought it only fitting that I would also tell you of the largest seed in the world, which is the Coco de Mer, or "sea coconut". With the Latin name of Lodoicea maldivica , it is the seed of a palm tree native to the Seychelles islands, which are located in the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar, off the eastern coast of the African continent.

Unlike the orchid Aerides odorata, which is found throughout the Asian continent (although endangered), the Coco de Mer is only found on two of the islands in the Seychelles, having gone extinct from the three others on which it was formerly found. Unfortunately, the Coco de Mer is also on IUCN's Red List as a species in danger of extinction.

The Coco de Mer can grow to be 44 pounds, which is the typical average weight of a six-year-old child, so that's a very big seed! And the Coco de Mer seed takes longer than a child to get to that weight, too: it can take up to ten years for the Coco de Mer seed to mature! So there you have it; now you know about the biggest seed in the world and the smallest seed in the world. 

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Female_coco_de_mer_growth.jpg

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