48 TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



forest shades with their elegant and curious or showy 

 flowers. The maranths produce " arrow-root," while the 

 ginger-worts are highly aromatic, producing ginger, 

 cardamums, grains of paradise, turmeric and several 

 medicinal drugs. The Musacese produce the most valuable 

 of tropical fruits and foods. The banana is the variety 

 which is always eaten as a fruit, having a delicate 

 aromatic flavour ; the plantain is a larger variety which is 

 best cooked. Eoasted in the green state it is an excellent 

 vegetable resembling roasted chestnuts ; when ripe it is 

 sometimes pulped and boiled with water, making a very 

 agreeable sweet soup ; or it is roasted, or cut into slices 

 and fried, in either form being a delicious tropical 

 substitute for fruit pudding. These plants are annuals, 

 producing one immense bunch of fruit. This bunch is 

 sometimes four or five feet long containing near 

 200 plantains, and often weighs about a hundred- 

 weight. They grow very close together, and Humboldt 

 calculated that an acre of plantains would supply more 

 food than could be obtained from the same extent of 

 ground by any other known plant. Well may it be said 

 that the plantain is the glory of the tropics, and well 

 was the species named by Linnaeus Musa paradisiaca ! 

 Arums. Another very characteristic and remarkable 

 group of tropical plants are the epiphytal and climbing 

 arums. These are known by their large, arrow-shaped, 

 dark green and glossy leaves, often curiously lobed or 

 incised, and sometimes reticulated with large open 

 spaces, as if pieces had been regularly eaten out of 

 them by some voracious insects. Sometimes they form 

 clusters of foliage on living or dead trees to which they 

 cling by their aerial roots. Others climb up the smooth 



