Coconut pearl
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The coconut pearl is alleged to be a coconut-produced gemstone. Claimed to be the rarest botanical gem in the world,[1] the coconut pearl supposedly grows inside the coconut.[2] However, the existence of these pearls is in dispute, and some claim that published photos are hoaxes.[3]
Wayne's Word, the source of much of the descriptive text and photographs used to illustrate coconut pearls on the Internet, writes that "several botany textbooks flatly state that coconut pearls are a hoax because proof of their existence is totally unfounded" and "I prematurely published an on-line note about this "pearl" [The Maharaja coconut pearl, on display at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, Florida] in 1996 before I discovered that it did not come from a coconut."[4] They form in roughly one in every million coconuts according to the Ripley's believe it or not daily calendar.
References
Further reading
- David Fairchild. "Garden Islands of the Great East". Scribner: New York, 1948. pp. 124–5.
- FWT Hunger. "Cocos nucifera". Amsterdam, 1920. pp. 244–50.
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- "Quick Quiz" Action Comics 155: 34 (April 1951)
