The coconut pearl is alleged to be a coconut

Coconut

The coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, is a member of the family Arecaceae . It is the only accepted species in the genus Cocos. The term coconut can refer to the entire coconut palm, the seed, or the fruit, which is not a botanical nut. The spelling cocoanut is an old-fashioned form of the word...

-produced gemstone

Gemstone

A gemstone or gem is a piece of mineral, which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments...

. Claimed to be the rarest botanical gem in the world, the coconut pearl supposedly grows inside the coconut. However, the existence of these pearls is in dispute, and some claim that published photos are hoaxes. 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

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden is a botanic garden, with extensive collections of rare tropical plants including palms, cycads, flowering trees and vines. It is located in metropolitan Miami, just south of Coral Gables, Florida, United States, surrounded at the south and west by Matheson...

 in Coral Gables, Florida

Coral Gables, Florida

Coral Gables is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, southwest of Downtown Miami, in the United States. The city is home to the University of Miami....

] in 1996 before I discovered that it did not come from a coconut."

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.