Botanical Description.--A well-known palm with slender stem, surrounded by many circles; it grows to about the same height as the coco-nut palm or less. The flowers spring in bunches of long, thread-like spikes from the trunk a little below the crown of leaves at the base of the long, smooth, green, sheath-like petioles which clasp the trunk; each spike bears many staminate and a few pistillate flowers. The fruit is about the size and shape of a hen's egg, the husk tow-like or filamentose, the kernel pinkish or light red. Habitat.--Grows throughout the islands. _Cocos nucifera_, L. Nom. Vulg.--_Coco_, Sp.-Fil.; _Niog_, Tag.; _Coco-nut Palm_, Eng. Uses.--This plant is, perhaps, the most useful in the Philippines. Without it and the bamboo plant the people of the Archipelago would not know how to live. It produces vinegar, an alcoholic drink called _tuba_ or _coco-wine_, an oil, an edible nut, and its leaves are used instead of nipa to roof the huts. Tuba is an opaline, slightly sweet liquid, with an agreeable taste, which rapidly becomes acid under the influence of the heat. A flowering or fruit-bearing stalk, which has not been incised before, is chosen and encircled with several rings of rope or rattan. The stalk is then cut and a bamboo vessel called a _bombón_ is hung to receive the sap which escapes during the night. This liquid is valuable as a drink for those who are debilitated, suffering from pulmonary catarrh, and even for consumptives, who are accustomed to drink it every morning, sometimes with marvelous results, according to reports. The heat of the day rapidly ferments the tuba, converting it into a mild vinegar, which is widely used for domestic purposes in the Philippines. When fermented and distilled it produces a weak alcohol of disagreeable taste called coco-wine. The ripe fruit contains a rather soft and savory meat which is generally eaten mixed with the clear, sweet coco-nut milk. Later the meat becomes firmer and is used as a food and an oil much used in the islands is extracted from it. To extract the oil the meat is grated and pressed until all the juice is extracted. This is called the milk and when boiled is converted almost completely into oil. Cocoanut milk has an agreeable taste and may in some cases take the place of cow's milk. It is apt to produce diarrhoea, however, which action may be bad for some but on the other hand good for others, such as the habitually constipated. Both the meat and the milk are widely used by the natives in making sweets.