Talk:Coconut/GA1: Difference between revisions – Wikipedia

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Nominator: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 16:21, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Rollinginhisgrave (talk · contribs) 04:57, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’ll give this a review.

Prose and content

• The lead can better explain what the composition of a coconut entails. I think the reader will be interested in knowing what part (fruit / seed etc) they are seeing in supermarkets.
• Coconuts were spread in historic times I think this is too vague to be helpful.
• Why has it got three germination pores if two are plugged? Just vestigial?
• I would recommend linking Multinucleate cell
• “A full-sized fruit weighs about 1.4 kilograms” surely this would dependent on the variety?
• “each about 1 cm (1⁄2 in) large” I think it’s best to just clarify this to be diameter.

Suggestions

• The treatment in the body and the stand-alone article for Coconut Religion do not appear to merit inclusion in the lead.
  • Removed; it’s a strikingly unusual fact all the same.

Sources

• On fertile soil, a tall coconut palm tree can yield up to 75 fruits per year, but more often yields less than 30.: looking at the sources:
  • Grimwood, p. 18.: This is being used to support the claim that yields are often “less than 30”, but the source credits the small number to a “lack of good cultural practices”. The source is published in 1975, it cannot verify such a claim for modern agricultural practice. I don’t see support for the claim that in fertile soils a palm tree can yield “up to 75 fruits per year”. If you are inferring it from copra production, I would caution against it as we don’t know if fertile soils produce larger fruit, but putting that aside a straightforward ratio of 60 fruits & 1.5 tonnes of copra from normal trees & X fruits & “over” 2 tonnes of copra from trees in fertile soil would mean 80+ fruits. The source also notes that in “hybrids much higher yields have been reported… around 138 nuts pers palm per year.”
  • Manilla Bulletin: I don’t know what this source is being used for; it says the average yield is 80 nuts a year in the Phillipines (actual, not potential), though it also notes a new variety that produces on average 105 and up to 150 nuts per year.
  • The Financial Express: I don’t know what this source is being used for, as it doesn’t report crop density so cannot be used to infer per tree yield.
• I’m noticing a few places where sources are disagreeing but only one perspective is presented. For instance, Pradeepkumar describes dwarf coconut trees as taking 5-6 years to become productive and Chan & Elevitch give 3 years, yet the article simply states 4-5 years. Or, Chan & Elevitch give a lifespan for dwarf varieties of 70 years, while the article gives 30 years. To be clear this is going to reliability rather than comprehensiveness.
• The female flower is much larger than the male flower. Flowering occurs continuously. Neither appear in the source (that I can see). I went to look at the other sources in the paragraph in case something got lost in a shuffle, and found the lack of page numbers for Handbook on Coconut Palm unhelpful (where did we land on that for GACR?). I found the claim it was being used to support on page 11, though it was copied direct from the book to the article.
  • Article: “The coconut is monoecious, producing female and male flowers on the same inflorescence.”
  • Source: “The coconut is monoecious, producing female and male flowers on the same inflorescence.”

Obviously not you, but it needs to be cleaned up. I didn’t see support for the claims of constant flowering or the female flower being much larger than the male (although they don’t seem particularly controversial)

• “allow them to lodge into sandy shorelines” can you quote what is being used to support this?

[pause first readthrough around Distribution and habitat]

Rollinginhisgrave (talk | edits) 04:57, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]