ORIGIN OF THE BANANA 



One of Earliest Crops Cultivated by Man — Perhaps Valued at First Only for its 



Roots — Doubt as to Time of its Introduction to America — Prehistoric 



and Allied Forms — Irregularities of its Behavior in Cultivation. 



The Editor. 



THERE seems little reason to 

 doubt that the banana was one 

 of the first foods of man, and 

 that it was one of the first plants 

 cultivated. 



"Wild bananas and their botanical 

 relatives," says 0. F. Cook, ^ "are natives 

 of the rocky slopes of mountainous 

 regions of the moist tropics, where 

 shrubs and trees prevent the growth of 

 ordinary herbaceous vegetation." It is 

 probably in a similar region that the first 

 appearance of Man is to be looked for. 

 "Everything leads one to believe," as 

 Beccari" says, "that the principal culti- 

 vated fruits originated in the region 

 where man first acquired a high grade of 

 civilization." Primordial man of the 

 tropics was undoubtedly an agricul- 

 turist rather than a live-stock breeder. 

 He lived on the resources most readily 

 furnished him by nature, and among 

 these, few wotdd be more readily avail- 

 able than the banana. It is permissible, 

 then, to suppose that the banana was 

 one of the first fruits which attracted 

 his attention; that he soon brought it 

 under cultivation, and that he at once 

 began to submit it to that long process 

 of improvement which has continued 

 for some hundreds of thousands, per- 

 haps, of years, and is more active today 

 than ever before. 



If Man appeared in the Indo- Malayan 

 region, as is widely believed at present, 

 it seems natural to seek for the origin 

 of the banana in the same region; and 

 such a location for it is accepted by most 

 botanists. This primitive banana prob- 

 ably did not differ widely from the wild 

 bananas found today in many parts of 

 the tropics, although none of the latter 

 can be confidently pointed out as repre- 



senting the ancestral type. Beccari, 

 indeed, considers that all the wild forms 

 known today are merely cultivated 

 forms which have escaped from cultiva- 

 tion at some time in the past. He found 

 in Borneo four new species which gre-w 

 only in regions deforested by man 

 Whence were they brought? he asked 

 himself, and was obliged to conclude, 

 after a survey of the whole problem, 

 that probably each region develops its 

 own well characterized species of Musa 

 — a conclusion which finds support in 

 the fact that no species yet known has a 

 very wide geographical distribution. 

 At present the genus seems to be de- 

 pendent on man for its possibilities of 

 development: if can not make its way 

 in the primitive forest, he concludes. It 

 is one of the many crops which have 

 been so changed by man to meet his 

 own needs that they are no longer able 

 to hold their own in the free competi- 

 tion of nature. 



ROOTS AND HEART EATEN. 



The original form of banana must 

 have been of little value as a fruit. 

 Cook has therefore concluded that it 

 was first a root crop, the roots even yet 

 being used by the natives of some 

 regions, while the tender heart was 

 doubtless also an article of food, as it is 

 today in Abyssinia. Cultivated for its 

 roots, the banana began to produce 

 better fruits, by chance, or as a result 

 of asexual propagation, and at a very 

 early day must have become more 

 prized for the latter than for the former. 



"The wild varieties are almost wholly 

 seeds," Beccari observes, "but what 

 pulp exists is sweet and agreeable. It 

 therefore only requires some agent to 



'Annual Report Smithsonian Inst., p. 481, Washington, D. C, 1903. 

 -Beccari, Odoardo, Nelle Foreste di Borneo, p. 611. Firenze, 1902. 



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