BANANAS.
Thirty years ago few people outside the large cities had ever seen a banana—fewer by far were those who knew and liked the taste of the fruit. Surprising changes have been brought about by the growth of commerce between this country and the West Indies. The poorest family in the small est inland village can afford to eat this tropical fruit, for it is everywhere, and usually it is the cheapest to be had.
To see banana plants growing we may have to go no farther than the city park, even if we live in the region of cold winters. Started in green houses, they make an interesting tropical feature of the mass-planting in the border, or the high centre of a round flower bed. Such plants remind one of huge corn stalks, though the leaves are broad sheets of green that are soon slit into strings down to the strong midrib by flapping in the wind.
In the southern states the season is so long that these plants blossom. The single huge bud turns down, and begins blossoming by lifting the purple bract that sheathes the oldest and uppermost group of flowers. Gradually the sheath drops, the showy stamens fall away, and finger-like green fruits in the familiar "hand" of eight to fifteen bananas are seen. How near these come to ripen ing depends upon the latitude and the season.
Warmth and sun are supplied in a narrow belt that crosses southern Florida. This is the north ern rim of the "banana belt" that covers the West Indies and Central America, and on around the globe. Southern Louisiana, Texas, Mexico, and southern California have paying banana planta tions within a narrow area.
The banana stalk grows in the Tropics to a height of thirty feet. This is its maximum, of course. In ordinary plantations no such giants are seen. Fancy harvesting the single clusters of fruit from such stalks! The rootstocks under ground live on, sending up new shoots, which reach maturity and fruit within a year or eighteen months from the time they start. Immediately after fruiting the stalk dies. The planter's job is to cut out these stalks as fast as he harvests the fruit clusters.
The fruit is cut green but full-grown, and put directly into the hold of vessels that sail without delay for northern cities. The jobbers have cars in waiting to distribute the cargo to inland points.
So, with the least possible delay and handling, the crop moves to the consumer. Cold storage is not for bananas. But in the cool atmosphere that suits them they gradually ripen, and hung in the grocer's windows, turn from green to yellow.
The big yellow Martinique is the most common variety we have. The crimson fruit of the Red Jamaica is occasionally shipped in, and is used in making up baskets of fancy fruits. We rarely see
the kind called plantain, that is not sweet, but is cooked as a vegetable in all tropical countries. The fruit of one of these coarse plantains in East Africa is about the size and shape of a man's arm! A traveller in the Far East describes the great golden bunches of bananas heaped by the tons in the market places of cities of Java, and cheap beyond belief. "The Java pisang, or banana, however, is but a coarse plantain with pinkish yellow, dry pulp, of a pumpkiny flavor that sadly disappoints the palate. Yet it is Nature's greatest gift in the tropics. Every tiny village and almost every little native hut has its banana patch or its banana tree, which requires nothing of labor in cultivation, save the weeding away of the old stalks. Four thousand pounds of this food will grow, without human aid, within the same space of ground required to raise ninety-nine pounds of potatoes or thirty-three pounds of wheat; both 1 of these northern crops acquired, too, only by : incessant sweat of the brow and muscular exertion. The pisang is the tropical staff of life for white as well as natives, as wholesome and necessary as bread, and an equivalent of the latter as a starchy food. It comes to one with the earliest breakfast cup, appears at every meal, arrives with the after noon tea tray, and always ends the late dinner as . the inevitable accompaniment of cheese." The popularity of our yellow banana is partly due to the very convenient package it comes in, and to the fact that it is not sticky nor messy, nor does it need "fixing" before children can eat it. The tough skin keeps the soft inside clean, yet it parts easily enough. The seeds have been dwarfed to mere remnants by generations of repro duction by suckers.
Banana meal, made of the dried flesh of ripe or green fruit, and evaporated slices are on the mar ket. In this form we may know what the fruit tastes like when it is not cut green. New recipes for cooking bananas give us added pleasure in this nutritious food. It has come to be ranked one of the good salad fruits, when used before it is dead ripe. It is served with Mayonnaise or French dressing, alone or with nut meats.
Two members of the banana group have in edible fruit, but are useful for the fibre they yield. Manila hemp is obtained from the leaf sheaths of the most important species. The leaf blades of others are tough enough for papers. Coarser ones are split and the dried strips woven into baskets, mats, and bags.
Starch is made from the fleshy rootstocks of an African banana.