Daniel notices the three dark spots on a coconut.

They look like a face. Two eyes and a mouth.

They are not just for looking like a face. Those three spots are germination pores -- soft points in the hard inner shell -- and they reveal something about how the coconut fruit was built.

Usually only one of the three is functional. That is the pore the developing seedling uses to push through when a coconut germinates. The other two are typically sealed. And understanding why there are three at all takes you back to the flower the coconut developed from.

Palm flowers typically have their parts arranged in threes. The coconut's ovary is built from three carpels -- three female reproductive sections. That three-part structure is reflected in the fruit that develops from it. The mature coconut normally contains one seed, but the  ...