then that he found the remarkable plant to the illustration of 
which we have devoted two plates, and which would still have 
remained unknown to us to the present day (save from Bruce’s 
description and really accurate figures), but for the kindness of 
Walter Plowden, Esq., our late British Consul at Mussowah, who 
sent the seeds of this plant to me in 1853, under the native name, 
“Ansett.” From our ignorance of the appearance of the seeds 
of any Banana (the cultivated Bananas and Plantains do not per- 
fect their seeds), we did not at first recognize these seeds as 
connected with that family of the Vegetable Kingdom; but the 
growth being rapid in our Palm-house, we soon discovered our 
plant to be the “ Znsete” of Bruce (not Enseté, as written by 
Poiret). But if this distinguished Abyssinian explorer was 
Wrong in pronouncing it, as he did, to be “no species of Musa,” 
we must remember that he could have only been acquainted 
with the Bananas known in cultivation; and he certainly well 
distinguished his plant from these. “It is true,” he says, “the 
leaf of the Banana resembles that of the Ensete; it bears figs,* 
and has an excrescence (the spadix) from its trunk, chiefly dif- 
fering from the Znsete in size, etc.; but the figs of a Banana 
are in shape of a cucumber, and this is the part that is eaten, 
The fig is sweet, though mealy, and of a taste highly agreeable. 
It is supposed to have no seeds” (the flowers being abortive), 
“but the figs of the Ensete are not eatable ; they are of a ten- 
der, soft substance, watery, tasteless, and in colour and consis- 
tence similar to a rotten apricot; they are of a conical form, 
crooked a little at the lower end, about an inch and a half in 
length, and an inch in breadth where thickest. In the inside 
of these there is a large stone, half an inch long, of the shape of 
a bean or Cashew-nut, of a dark-brown colour.” And again, 
the stem of the Banana, as is well known, is an annual, bearin 
its fruit as soon as its stem and foliage have attained their full 
size, and then perishing down to the root, and no part of the 
‘Stem can be eaten. “The body of the trunk of the Eusete for 
several feet high is esculent; and while young, is, when cooked, 
the best of all vegetables, tasting like wheat-bread not perfectly 
baked. ... When you make use of the Bnsete for eating, you 
cut it immediately above the roots, and perhaps a foot or two 
higher if the plant is advanced in age; you strip the green from 
the upper part till it becomes white, where it is soft, like a turnip 
= boiled ; if eaten with milk and butter, it is the best of all 
ood. 
‘To understand clearly the part that is eaten of the Ensete, we 
must consider the mode of growth of the plant. The leaves, at 
least the very broad sheathing bases, all spring from a large, very 
* The French call the small-fruited kinds “ Figues Bananiers.” 
tel 
