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THE WILD PLANTAIN {MUSA SUPERBA, ROXB.) 

 By G. M. Ryan, i.f.s., f.l.s. 

 With a Photograph. 

 {Read before the Bombay Natural History Society on 16th June 1904. ) 



It had been raining very heavily for two or three days during the 

 latter end of May 1903, and as conditions looked very much as if the 

 rains had set in I asked a cultivator who came to pay me a visit whether 

 the monsoon had really begun, whereupon he smiled and answered with 

 a very confident air in the negative. Asked why he was so certain of 

 this he said " Well, sir, the wild plantain has not thrown out its new 

 leaves yet. As soon as the plant does this we know the monsoon is at 

 hand ; " and my friend the cultivator was right.* The monsoon had not 

 burst, although it seemed at the time uncommonly like it. The rain 

 that then came down wasthe accompaniment of a severe cyclone, the like 

 of which has not been recorded in Thana for about 300 years. f • 



The force of the wind is reported to have been 100 miles an hour and 

 over half a million trees (Teak and the Palmyra Palm especially) were 

 blown down| in the forests and non-forest lands of the Dahanu, Malum 

 and Bassein seacoast Talukas of Thana. 



It is about this apparently insignificant plant to which the cultivator 

 alluded therefore that it is proposed to record some notes, and it will be 

 gathered from them that in addition to its utility as a sort of jungle 

 barometer the wild plantain root-stock and leaf-sheaths form economic 

 products of no inconsiderable value. 



It perhaps may be interesting to mention here parenthetically that 

 near the end of the rainy season the Foorsa (Eehis earinata) finds a 

 resting place between the leaf-stalks of the wild plantain loaves. § He 

 probably seeks this cool retreat as a sort of vantage ground for making 

 his depredations. 



* Karvi — Strohilanthes callosus y Nees — is another plant which is looked upon as 

 a similar sort of jungle barometer. 



fin the Gazetteer (Thana), Vol. XIV, p. 31, a severe storm is reported to have 

 occurred in Bassein in May 1618. " Thousands of palms were torn up by the roots 

 and some the wind lifted through the air like feathers and carried great distances." 



X Large numbers of the Palmyra Palm were also beheaded. 



§ He is also fond of inhabiting the branches of the u apta " (.Baulunia racemosa") 

 tree — a tree the leaves of which are collected and sold for native cigarettes (Bidis) 

 in Bombay, 



