166 MONOCOTYLEDONS 



from fifteen to twenty feet. The leaves spring from a slioii. 

 tuberous root-stock, which buds out at its sides. As a matter 

 of fact, the Banana plant is just a much elongated bdlb, the 

 scales and leaves forming not a globose body as in the onion, 

 but a long cylinder (c/. Bulb, page 154). 



The leaves are very large, six to eight feet long and two feet 

 broad. In bud they are rolled up from one side. They would 

 offer much resistance to the wind, the pressure of which the weak 

 stem could hardly withstand. To prevent the plant being thus 

 overturned, nature corrects herself iu a very simple manner: 

 the leaves have a strong, fleshy mid-rib, from which the veins 

 run to the margin at right angles, and they split readily ivhen 

 swayed by the wind; the leaf now acts like a pinnate leaf, the 

 various parts letting the wind pass between them, and thus lessen- 

 ing the resistance {cf. Cocoanut tree, page 139). The mid-rib 

 and the stem-clasping sheath contain numerous large cavities, 

 the result of the very quick growth of the plant, there being 

 hardly time enough to provide the food stuff required to form so 

 much solid tissue. 



2. Flowers. — The flowers are borne on a long scape running 

 through the leaf-sheaths as a white cylinder. It inclines down- 

 ward by its own weight in a graceful curve. The flowers are 

 arranged in whorls or clusters, and each whorl of flowers is 

 protected under an ovate, concave, leathery bract (spathe), 

 crimson on the inside and with a pale bloom on the outside. 

 Eight or more of these, nearest the base of the huge, drooping 

 panicle, embrace a double row of ten to sixteen flowers which 

 are fertile. With the maturity of each successive row of flowers, 

 the spathe reclines and falls off', and the fruit appears. The rest 

 of the whorls — and they are very numerous — expand in succes- 

 sion for two or three months, and contain similar double rows 

 of flowers which, however, do not bear fruit, but fall with their 

 spathes. 



The perianth consists originally of six petals arranged in two 

 whorls (compare Lilies, Amaryllids, Orchids and Zingiberace?e). 

 The three outer sepals and two petals of the inner whorl are 

 united into a tube with a slit throughout its length, in which the 



