botanyshitposts:

botanyshitposts:

So I found this coconut on the beach in Costa Rica and when I opened it THIS was inside. I think it’s the endosperm (or whatever you call the thing that develops into the tree). The coconut water itself wasn’t as sweet as usual (probably because it had sprouted), but the little sprout boi tasted sweet on one end and salty on the other. (submitted by @jewishpangolin)

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dude i have no idea how to tell you this but i have no idea what this is. i showed this to my plant anatomy professor and one of the mods at @thebashfulbotanist after class and none of us could figure out what this is. it doesn’t look like a fungus, the embryos in coconuts are tiny and don’t look like this, and the first thing a coconut sprouts is a root, not the stem, and it grows outward. there should be nothing normal like this growing in there. my plant anatomy teacher has never seen anything like this and has offered to forward this image to a palm researcher she knows to see if he has. i repeat, we have no idea what you ate but it was not a normal sprout boi. please stand by

UPDATE: this was a FALSE COCONUT ALARM. @syngoniums is correct that, as it turns out, this is in fact the coconut haustorium/cotyledon, aka an organ from a veerrryyy young (normal) sprout boi rendered unrecognizable by its early stage in development. these are apparently edible and even sold for their alleged health effects in some regions. i repeat, apparently op only gained power by eating a nondescript organ from a coconut on the shore