Coco De — Mal

For the traveler, seeing a living Coco de Mal palm in the Seychelles is a bucket-list experience. For the collector, owning a legal, certified shell is owning a piece of botanical history. But for the scientist, the Coco de Mal is simply a miracle of patience—a fruit that takes seven years to ripen, only to fall to the forest floor and wait another century to grow.

The "evil nut" has made appearances in literature ranging from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (where he compares the shape of the whale's head to the sea coconut) to modern video games like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag , where a "Coco de Mal" is a collectible rare artifact. coco de mal

A healthy Coco de Mal palm can live for over 800 years, meaning some of the trees currently growing in the Vallée de Mai were saplings during the Crusades. For the traveler, seeing a living Coco de