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This coconut trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the palm the Philippines calls the tree of life: why a coconut is technically a drupe, how it got a name meaning 'skull', how Austronesian sailors carried it across two oceans, which countries grow most of the world's 65 million tonnes, and what copra, coir and toddy actually are. It also stops at coconut water and oil, the giant robber crab that climbs palms, macaques trained to harvest, the coco de mer's record seed, Mardi Gras coconuts, the piña colada, Bounty bars, lamingtons, macaroons, Malibu and the much-repeated myth that falling coconuts kill 150 people a year. Easy questions suit family and tiki-night quizzes; the harder ones on botany and production will test food and plant geeks. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
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Q 01Botanically, what kind of fruit is a coconut?
A drupe
A drupe, like a peach or olive, is a fruit with a fleshy layer around a hard stone; the coconut's fibrous husk is that layer and the shell is the stone.
Q 02The name coconut comes from a 16th-century Portuguese word meaning what?
Head or skull
Portuguese coco meant head or skull, and also a grinning bogeyman of folklore; sailors thought the indentations on the shell looked like a face.
Q 03Which trio of countries grows most of the world's coconuts?
Indonesia, India and the Philippines
Indonesia, India and the Philippines together grow about 75 percent of the world's coconuts, most of it on smallholder farms along tropical coasts.
Q 04What is dried coconut flesh called?
Copra
Copra is the dried kernel of the coconut; pressing it yields coconut oil for cooking, soap and cosmetics, and the leftover cake feeds livestock.
Q 05What is the fibre from a coconut's husk, used in doormats and rope, called?
Coir
The name comes from Tamil and Malayalam words for cord or rope; brown coir comes from ripe nuts and white from unripe ones.
Q 06How many germination pores, or 'eyes', does a coconut shell have?
Three
They are remnants of the three carpels of the flower; the embryo pushes out through the functional one.
Q 07Roughly how tall can a coconut palm grow?
30 metres
Tall coconut varieties can reach 30 metres and live 60 years or more; dwarf varieties stay far shorter and fruit sooner.
Q 08Up to how many coconuts can a single palm yield in a year?
75
A healthy tall coconut palm on fertile land can yield up to 75 fruits a year, though fewer than 30 is more typical.
Q 09Which people domesticated the coconut and spread it by sea as far as Madagascar and the Pacific islands?
Austronesians
Austronesians domesticated the coconut in Island Southeast Asia and carried it on their voyages east across the Pacific and west to Madagascar, which they settled around 1,500 years ago.
Q 10Which explorer recorded the coconut as nux indica while in Sumatra?
Marco Polo
Marco Polo, passing through Sumatra on his way home from China, recorded the coconut as nux indica, Latin for Indian nut, the name the West used until Portuguese coco displaced it.
Q 11Which Swedish botanist formally described Cocos nucifera in Species Plantarum in 1753?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus gave the coconut its binomial Cocos nucifera in Species Plantarum in 1753; nucifera is Latin for nut-bearing.
Q 12According to urban legend, falling coconuts kill roughly how many people a year, supposedly more than sharks?
150
The 150-a-year figure spread after Peter Barss's 1984 paper on coconut injuries in Papua New Guinea, though no global count of such deaths has been made.
Q 13Which animals have been trained for around 400 years to harvest coconuts in Thailand?
Pig-tailed macaques
Pig-tailed macaques are trained at schools in southern Thailand to climb palms and twist off ripe nuts; a 2020 PETA investigation led some retailers to drop Thai coconut products.
Q 21The piña colada was proclaimed the official drink of which territory in 1978?
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico proclaimed the piña colada its official drink in 1978; the cocktail was developed in San Juan in the 1950s using Coco López coconut cream, invented there in 1954.
Q 22Which coconut-filled chocolate bar has been made by Mars since 1951?
Bounty
Bounty, a coconut filling coated in milk or dark chocolate, was introduced by Mars in the United Kingdom in 1951 and is sold as two bars per pack.
Q 23The coco de mer, or double coconut, holds which botanical record?
Largest seed of any plant
The coco de mer bears the largest seed of any plant, a double-lobed nut that can weigh more than 15 kg; it grows wild only on Praslin and Curieuse in the Seychelles.
Q 14The coconut crab, or robber crab, holds which record?
Largest living land arthropod
The coconut crab is the largest living land arthropod, weighing up to about 4 kg with a leg span near 1 m; it climbs palms and can crack coconuts with its claws.
Q 15Which Minangkabau dish simmers beef in coconut milk until almost dry?
Rendang
Rendang is beef simmered slowly in coconut milk and spices until the liquid has reduced almost to dryness, a Minangkabau dish from West Sumatra.
Q 16Below roughly what temperature does coconut oil turn into a white solid?
25 °C
Coconut oil is solid below about 25 °C and melts just above it, so in hot climates it is often hydrogenated to keep products firm.
Q 17Coconut water is harvested mainly from which coconuts?
Young ones
Coconut water fills young ones, the green coconuts harvested at six to seven months, before the liquid endosperm is absorbed into the thickening white flesh.
Q 18In Sanskrit the coconut palm is kalpa vriksha, meaning what?
The tree of the necessities of life
Kalpa vriksha means the tree of the necessities of life, since every part of the palm is used; in Malay it is the tree of a thousand uses.
Q 19Fresh or fermented palm sap, known as toddy across Asia, goes by what name in Filipino?
Tubâ
Tubâ is the Filipino name for coconut sap, sweet when drunk fresh and sour once fermented; tappers collect it from cut flower stalks high in the palm.
Q 20What is the name of the Hawaiian coconut pudding served at luaus?
Haupia
Haupia is a Hawaiian coconut pudding, traditionally thickened with Polynesian arrowroot and now usually with cornstarch, cut into squares or used as a pie filling.
Q 24The Australian lamington is thought to be named after a governor of which state?
Queensland
Lord Lamington was Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901; the most repeated story has his French chef, Armand Galland, improvising the cake for unexpected guests.
Q 25Macaroons, now often made with coconut, were originally made from what?
Ground almonds
The original macaroons were made from ground almonds, sugar and egg whites, like Italian amaretti; the coconut version is a later American and British variation.
Q 26Malibu, the coconut-flavoured rum liqueur, was made on which Caribbean island as of 2025?
Barbados
Malibu, owned by Pernod Ricard, has been made in Barbados since production moved there from Curaçao, where the brand was first produced.
Q 27Hand-decorated coconuts are prized Mardi Gras throws from which New Orleans krewe?
The Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club
The Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, founded in 1909, hands out painted and glittered coconuts on its Mardi Gras morning parade, among the most prized throws of Carnival.
Q 28The traditional British fairground game in which players throw balls at coconuts is called what?
Coconut shy
A coconut shy sets coconuts on posts; knock one off with a thrown ball and you keep it, 'shy' being an old word for throwing.
Q 29Pacific coconuts reached Mexico in the 16th century aboard which trade ships?
The Manila galleons
The Manila galleons, which sailed between the Philippines and Acapulco from 1565, carried Pacific coconuts to Mexico, where palms were planted along the Colima coast.
Q 30Which phytoplasma disease is a major threat to plantations of the palm?
Lethal yellowing
Macapuno, by contrast, has jelly-like flesh filling the whole cavity and is used in desserts.