On the territory of the small island of Praslin, well protected by a coral reef, there is one of the primeval forests - May Valley National Park, included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1983.
More than 5,000 Lodoicea maldivica fan palms grow on 20 hectares of forest, the fruit of which is the legendary sea coconut. Here is what the famous adventurer Henri de Monfreud, who saw other palm trees and did not hide his surprise, wrote: “This nut is the size of a large round pumpkin. It is double, and its two hemispheres resemble a pair of buttocks, between which nature was pleased to carefully reproduce some anatomical details, suggestive." The 3,000 nuts that ripen each year are government property and sell for a fixed price of $80 each.