Palm Trees are the tree of life. If you’re ever stranded on a island find a palm tree, everything you need comes from one. First off theres water in the green coconuts, they’re almost impossible to break open by force. So you have to peel them, well the proper term for it is shuck. ‘Shucking a coconut’. There’s a tool for it too, a three foot metal spike coming from the ground it’s not sharp it just ends in a point. You stab the coconut into the spike and work it around until your able to peel off part of the husk, and so on. Then when it’s all peeled theres the little ball in the middle that has the water in it. That my friend, is how you shuck a coconut.
Then there’s coconut ‘meat’ the white part on the inside of the sphere that holds the water. You can eat that but that’s also what you use to make coconut milk. First you have to shred the meat (we used a machine) then you take that and squeeze it out and that’s what makes the milk.
You can also make a hut from the giant leaves of the palm tree. You take the whole leaf then you weave one side of it in a simple pattern, you would have to make a ton of these but if you layer them up they’re a good roof all the houses at Ninamu had these as they’re roof.
You can also make a skirt with the leaves by splitting it in half at the center and wrapping it around your waist, it looks like a hoola skirt. You can also make sturdy string or rope from the stem of one of the leaves if you peel it down the middle.
Then theres a hat that you make out of the leaves too but it takes a lot of weaving. The girls and I learned to make Leis and other little things from the palm leaves too.
Food, water, milk, clothes, and shelter. The palm tree is my new favorite tree!
