Bearing cocoanut tree, Florida, circa 1920

About this postcard

A tall coconut palm, heavy with a cluster of nuts, leans across a grassy yard beside a picket gate and a brick path that leads toward the water, where a steamship sits on the horizon under a pink and blue sky. The card's own caption names it simply as a bearing cocoanut tree in Florida, a standard tropical vignette sold to winter visitors during the state's early tourist boom. Coconut palms were promoted as emblems of Florida's semi-tropical climate in the postcard era, though most of the state's tall roadside palms were planted rather than native.