MUSA PARADISIACA. Linn.
There is a great variety of this delicious fruit in the East Indies, where this species is largely cultivated for its fruit. The natives eat them with milk and sugar, as Europeans do strawberries. Europeans also fry the fruit with butter, and eat it dusted 'with sugar. A dye is obtainable from the skin of the fruit. Its stem and leaves afford a fibre suited for certain purposes, but inferior in point of strength to Manilla hemp, the fibre of the Musa textilis. The stem is placed on a board, and the pulpy mass scraped out with a blunt knife, whilst clean water is poured on to wash away the remains of the pulp ; the fibres are then dried in the sun. Each stem will give about 4 lbs. of raw fibre and 50 lbs. of fruit yearly. The fibre is fine, white, and silky, long, light, and strong. The quality depends on the mode of cultivation and treatment, but it is not so valuable as Manilla hemp. The stem seldom exceeds 7 or 8 inches in diameter and 12 feet in height, bears but one bunch of fruit, and dies, but it throws off new plants. The leaves, when young, are beautiful, expanding, with a smooth surface and vivid green, to 6 feet in length, and 2 or more in breadth, but, soon after attaining full size, the edges become torn by the wind. The flower is very large, purple, and shaped like an ear of Indian corn. At the root of the outer leaf, a double row of the fruit comes out half round the stalk or cob. The stalk then elongates a few inches, and another leaf is deflected, re vealing another double row. Thus the stalk grows on, leaving a leaf of the flower and a bunch of the fruit every few inches, till there come to be 25 or 30 bunches, containing about 150 or 180 plantains, and weighing from 60 to 80 lbs. Tho weight bends over the end of
the stalk, and when ripe it hangs within reach. Like the palms, it has no branches. In the East , Indies, it is for the fruit, as a dessert, that this , plantain is cultivated ; but Humboldt calculated that 33 lbs. of wheat and 99 lbs. of potatoes . require the same surface of ground that will produce 4000 lbs. of ripe plantains, which is to , potatoes as 44 to 1, and to wheat as 133 to 1. Banana is a West Indian and tropical American term. In India the term plantain alone is given.
The edible varieties extend through the Indian Archipelago, northwards as far as Japan, while in China are found M. coccinea and M. Caven dishii. M. glans is indigenous along the Malayan Peninsula. Dr. Helfer mentions that 20 varieties are found in the Tenasserim Provinces, and M. ornata grows in Chittagong. The Malays reckon 40 varieties of the cultivated banana, and the Philippine Islanders carry them to 57, both people having a distinctive epithet for each variety. The qualities are as various as those of apples and pears in Europe, the ordinary sorts being very indifferent fruit. In Khassya the name of the wild plantain is Kairem, and the cultivated Kakesh.—Ainslie ; Malcom's Travels ; Hooker's Him. Jour. ; Royle's Fib. F. ; Craw ford's Diet.