SWEET CASSAVA: ITS CULTURE, PROPERTIES, AND USES 



DISTRIBUTION NAMES VARIETIES. 



In the southern peninsula of Florida, and growing up well into the 

 frost belt, is found in many localities a cultivated plant known as 

 cassava, or sweet cassava. From a careful study of the climatic con- 

 ditions under which the plant flourishes it is safe to assume that it may 

 also be grown with success in southern Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, 

 and Texas. Cassava is a name which should properly apply only to the 

 purified starch derived from the roots of the plant, but it has passed 

 into general use to designate the plant itself. Botanically, the plant is 

 known as Janipha manihot, Manihot utilissima, Jatropha manihot, Man- 

 ihot a/ipi, Manihot Iceflingiij and Manihot palmata. One of its common 

 names is manioc plant. The fleshy root of this plant yields the greatest 

 portion of the daily food of the natives of many portions of tropical 

 America, and one of its forms of starch is imported largely into this 

 country as tapioca. It is a woody or shrubby plant, growing- from 

 fleshy, tuberous roots, the stems being smooth, with nodules where the 

 leaves grow. 



There is properly only one variety of the plant growing in Florida, 

 while that variety which grows in the tropics contains so much hydro- 

 cyanic acid as to render it poisonous. The variety grown in the sub- 

 tropical region of Florida, however, contains only a small quantity of 

 hydrocyanic acid, and is therefore commonly known as sweet cassava. 

 Some of the growers of the plant in Florida claim that two varieties 

 grow. in the State, one of which is poisonous on account of. the large 

 amount of hydrocyanic acid which it contains, and the other nonpoison- 

 ous, containing only a little hydrocyanic acid. It is quite probable, 

 however, that after the poisonous. variety has grown for a long while 

 in a subtropical climate it would lose largely its. poisonous properties. 

 The leaves of the poisonous variety in the tropics usually have seven 

 branches palmately divided. The leaves of the sweet variety are usually 

 only five-parted. The botanists clearly recognize two distinct varieties. 

 For instance, in the "Treasury of Botany," page 718, the following 

 remarks are made : 



It is quite clear that while the root of one is bitter and a virulent poison that of 

 the other is sweet and wholesome, and is commonly eaten cooked as a vegetable. 

 Both of them, especially the bitter, are most extensively cultivated over the greater 



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