What Pre-American Puerto Rico Was Really Like

May 2024 ยท 2 minute read

Today, Puerto Rico is kind of synonymous with palm trees. It's hard to imagine those sandy shores and tropical waters without a few palm trees blowing in the wind. So here's the most shocking thing you'll read all day: Coconuts in Puerto Rico are an invasive species.

Yes, it's true, when Columbus first reached Puerto Rico, there were no palm trees, and there were no coconuts. There were palm trees on some parts of the Pacific American coast, but the species is actually indigenous to the Asian tropics, and it hadn't yet spread as far as Puerto Rico. According to The Caribbean: A History of the Region and its Peoples, coconuts reached the Caribbean around 1525, and they weren't the only non-indigenous species to be introduced to the islands at that time. 

Before European occupation, bats were the only mammals endemic to Puerto Rico. Then the colonists imported cattle and pigs. They brought dogs, too, some of which ran off and turned feral. They also introduced mongoose to help control the rodents (that they also introduced). There are now four species of monkey living in Puerto Rico, too. Those escaped from a medical research lab.

Gradually, more and more non-native plants were introduced to the island, including oranges, coffee, mangoes, sugarcane, and bananas. And naturally, the colonists had to get rid of native habitat to make room for all that agriculture. And so the landscape today is really nothing like it was in pre-American Puerto Rico.

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