Interesting project, Tony.
What medium that you used to germinate it with?
Tom
I love this site so much. You just never know what cool, quirky, unusual, fascinating fruit-related projects you are going to read about/see when you log on here! A coconut embryo? Thatās very tasty? Who knew? Iāll tell you whoā¦other fruit lovers on here, as seen by the responses to the OP. Thanks for posting, Tony.
I would love to taste a coconut apple. Is there any way to identify a store bought coconut as one that may have an apple inside? Iāve bought many coconuts and never came across one. Will a coconut with a developed embryo inside always shows signs of it on the outside?
Tom,
I let the coconut sat in the water container for a week then planted in a pot with Miracle Gro moisture control potting mix bought at Walmart. I covered the potting mix up to the top of the coconut and left the sprout top to open air. The shoot grew 10 inches with a small pale green leaf and I saw 3 roots came out at the of the shoot.
Speedster1,
I was lucky to find the one out of 15 coconuts that had a sprout on top. I think you can start one without the sprout but that may take a little longer to get sprout to grow. Look on a bright side, the coconut only cost around $2 ish. Please try one. It was delicious. Crunchy, sweet, and coconut fragrant like nothing you have try before.
Tony
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depends on what stage the embryo has grown, and also depends on whether or not the coconut has been husked. If the coconut is being sold as a whole one(straight from the tree with thick fibrous husk), the sprouting āswordā of leaf sheath will usually show up an inch or so off the peduncle, or maybe at the attachment site of the peduncle itself
if the coconut is obtained already husked(naked down to the hard shell), you will notice that at the top are three āeyesā, and there will be two āmirror-image eyesā which are somewhat oval in shape, and there will be a much smaller and more roundish eye, and this round eye is where the leaf sheath sword will emerge.
Technically, the embryo is at the base of this leaf sheath, from which the leaf sheath and the future roots will grow, while the inner coconut āappleā is the cotyledon of the developing embryo. Cotyledon is that same thing that we see as paired kidney-shaped structures when we sprout beans, and many other dicots(meaning two cotyledon plants).
Coconut is a āmonocotā, and the lone cotyledon is the coconut āappleā that forms at the interior.
the āappleā grows concurrently with the developing leaf and roots-- at least initially at an approximate one is to one ratio, until the cotyledon has filled the interior within the shell, and it is then that the embryo will have become a stand-alone little palm tree and get much bigger relatively, whereas the cotyledon inside the shell starts withering, as the food supply inside the shell is likely used up by that time
thus said, it is best to buy the husked ones, because the husk is a couple of inches thick, so the eyes will be exposed already, and one could just check each and every coconut to see if there are any signs of sprouting at the roundish eye.
btw, as long as the mature coconuts are placed in a warm spot, they will sprout with no need for outside moisture(at least initially), and thereās no need for soil, although it will definitely help when the sprouts are bigger and if you intend to grow them as coconut leaf buds aka āheartsā(the coconut version of bamboo shoots).
lastly, the coconuts to buy should be the brown ones, as those are the mature ones.
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no need to apologize, in fact, most of us tropicana lovers ādigā it 
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I would love to try this, so if there isnāt a little shoot poking, what else should I be looking for in a husked coconut at the store. Should it be looking too firm and as perfect as possible? Also I saw green coconuts at the stores before, will those sprout?
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