54 NUTRITIVE PLANTS. 



have ripened their fruit very well ; but as they grow very tall, and 

 their leaves are large, they require more room in the stove than 

 most people are willing to allow them. They are propagated by 

 suckers, which come from the roots of those plants that have fruit- 

 ed ; and many times the younger plantsj when stinted in growth, 

 also put out suckers. The fruit of this tree is four or five inches 

 long, of the size and shape of a middling cucumber, and of a highly 

 grateful flavour: the leaves are too yards long, and a foot broad 

 in the middle; they join to the top of the body of the tree, and 

 often contain in their cavities a great quantity of water which runs 

 out upon a small incision being made into the tree, at the junction 

 of the leaves. Bananas grow in great bunches, that weigh 12lbs. 

 and upwards. The body of the tree is so porous as not to merit 

 the name of wood ; the tree is only perennial by its roots, and dies 

 down to the ground every autumn. When the natives of the West 

 Indies (says Labat) undertake a voyage, they make provision of a 

 paste of banana, which, in case of need, serves them for nourish, 

 ment and drink : for this purpose they take ripe bananas, and hav- 

 ing squeezed them through a fine sieve, form the solid fruit into 

 small loaves, which are dried in the sun or in hot ashes, after being 

 previously wrapped up in the leaves of Indian flowering-reed. 



[Wright. Labat. fVildenozv, 



SECTION VI. 



Cassava or Cassada, Manioc or Manihoc. 

 Jatropha. Linn. 



Of this useful genus of plants there are nine species; and of 

 these we shall notice five. 



1. J. Carcas, or English Physic-nut, with leaves cordate and 

 angular -, a knotty shrub growing about ten or twelve feet high. 

 The extremities of the branches are covered with leaves ; and the 

 flowers which are of a green herbaceous kind, are set on in an 

 umbel fashion round the extremities of the branches, but especially 

 the main stalks. These are succeeded by as many nuts, whose out- 

 ward tegument is green and husky, which being peeled off disco- 

 vers the nut, whose shell is black, and easily cracked ; this contains 

 mi almond. like kernel, divided into two parts, between which se- 

 paration lie two milk white thin membranaceous leaves, easily sepa- 

 rable from each other. These have not only a bare resemblance of 



