Last week during the Farmer’s Market, we posed the question: what is a coconut?  Like, what IS it?  A seed?  A nut?  A fruit?  Do you know?

Well as it turns out, it’s a drupe.

“A drupe is a fruit with a hard stony covering enclosing the seed (like a peach or olive) and comes from the word drupa meaning overripe olive. A coconut, and all drupes, have three layers:  the exocarp (outer layer), the mesocarp (fleshy middle layer), and the endocarp (hard, woody layer that surrounds the seed).”

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/coconut.html

Apparently, they used coconut water as IV fluid when it was in short supply during WWII and Vietnam.  Betcha didn’t know that.  And it takes almost a year for one to mature!  I didn’t know that, either.

So the answer to our question was: it’s a nut, a fruit AND a seed!