Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/802

780 and plantain were formerly considered as distinct species, but now the plantain is regarded as a variety of the banana (Musa sapientum). The name of the plantain (Musa paradisiaca) originated with the Christians in the East, as they thought it to be the forbidden fruit of paradise. The plantain is cooked and eaten as a vegetable, but is not exported to any extent. It is said to be "to the inhabitants of the torrid zone what bread and potatoes are to those



of the north temperate zone," for a pound of plantains contains more nutriment than three pounds of meat. It is also the most prolific of all food plants known. Humboldt, the German naturalist, calculated that thirty-three pounds of wheat and ninety-eight pounds of potatoes require for their growth the same space of ground as will produce four thousand pounds of bananas. Such a striking statement would seem to need verification, yet the yield is undoubtedly very great. The banana plant rises from fifteen to twenty feet in height, terminated by a tuft of enormous light-green leaves six to ten feet long, which are at first undivided, but are gradually split up by the wind. From the center issues a stalk bearing the fruit, which gradually turns upward, while the stalk itself continues to grow down, and this end is termed the "banana bob." As we are