THE KINGD(JM OF UGANDA 



101 



developed info the cultivated banana exactly like the cultivated banana 

 separately developed in ]<'astern Asia ? 



It would, in any case, be difficult to make a M Uganda of to-day 

 believe that his beloved food substance, which provides him with a nias^s 

 of nourishing vegetable pulp, with a dessert fruit, with swc.-i beer and 

 heady spirit, with soap, plates, dishes, napkins, and materials for foot- 

 bridges,* was not always indigenous to the land he dwells in, and of 

 which it has become the distinguishing feature. 



The banana, as most of my readers are aware, lielongs to an order of 

 monocotyledonous ]ilants called the Zingihcraca^, to which belong the 

 cannas and the root producing ginger. The flower grows on a long stalk 



KEKI) I'KNCK; 



IX AN ICWeA TOW N 



proceeding from the highest part of the [)lant (the stem of the lianana 

 may grow in fertile districts to a height of twenty feet above the ground). 

 The corolla of the flower, with its pooily developed petals, is yellowish 

 white, but it is to a great extent concealed from sight lieliind a huge 

 spathe of })urple. As the flower is fertilised, this spathe draws back and 

 falls off. There is, however, always a considerable space of bare stalk 

 between those flowers which have been fertilised, and are ])ro(lucing fruit, 

 and the end of the stalk, where the last flowers remain in a heart-sha[)ed 

 bulb of purple spathes. A bunch of bananas with the great purple tassel 

 at the end of the stalk Uiakes tpiite a beautiful object to })aint, from the 

 contrast between the fat, smooth yellow-green fruit above and the purple- 



* In the western parts of the Uganda Protectorate long \>\\>c su-nis are made out 

 of the stalks of banana leaves. 



