II 



TO GROW BANANAS FROM DATE SEEDS 



During the dark ages it was a widespread Arab 

 superstition that bananas could, under certain 

 circumstances, be grown from date seeds. The shght 

 similarity in general appearance between the two 

 plants was elevated to a real relationship, particularly 

 by the Baghdad physician 'Abdu-1 Latif (twelfth 

 century), in his Description of Egypt (pub. at Paris 

 by Imperial Press, 1810, with tr. by S. de Sacy). The 

 writer declares that to make the relationship evident 

 all you need to do is to place a date seed in a fruit of 

 the colocasia and bury it; the result will be a banana 

 plant. 



The plant which the Arabs designate as colocasia 

 (Arab., from Pers., qulqas) is doubtless not Colocasia 

 antiquorum, but the sacred water lily of the Egyptians, 

 Nymphea lotus {Castalia mystica). The way in which 

 the writers speak of it shows, however, that they had 

 only a hazy idea in mind, and probably did not 

 really know what plant they were referring to. 



Ibn Awam, the Spanish Moor who wrote his 

 treatise on agriculture in the twelfth century, gives 

 more detailed directions for performing the operation, 

 in his chapter entitled "To Make a Date Seed Grow 

 in a Colocasia Root, to Obtain a Banana by the 

 Permission of God." He says: 



"The manner of operating is to plant a colocasia 

 root in a place constantly exposed to the sun, where 

 one can water it abundantly and continuously and 



