220 DE BANANA 



proof variety of banana, his condition in this respect, I am 

 glad to say, has been greatly ameliorated. 



By descent the banana bush is a developed tropical lily, 

 not at all remotely allied to the common iris, only that its 

 flowers and fruit are clustered together on a hanging spike, 

 instead of growing solitary and separate as in the true 

 irises. The blossoms, which, though pretty, are compara- 

 tively inconspicuous for the size of the plant, show the 

 extraordinary persistence of the lily type; for almost all 

 the vast number of species, more or less directly descended 

 from the primitive lily, continue to the very end of the 

 chapter to have six petals, six stamens, and three rows of 

 seeds in their fruits or capsules. But practical man, with 

 his eye always steadily fixed on the one important quality 

 of edibility the sum and substance to most people of all 

 botanical research has confined his attention almost 

 entirely to the fruit of the banana. In all essentials (other 

 than the systematically unimportant one just alluded to) 

 the banana fruit in its original state exactly resembles the 

 capsule of the iris that pretty pod that divides in three 

 when ripe, and shows the delicate orange-coated seeds 

 lying in triple rows within only, in the banana, the fruit 

 does not open ; in the sweet language of technical botany, 

 it is an indehiscent capsule ; and the seeds, instead of 

 standing separate and distinct, as in the iris, are embedded 

 in a soft and pulpy substance which forms the edible and 

 practical part of the entire arrangement. 



This is the proper appearance of the original and 

 natural banana, before it has been taken in hand and 

 cultivated by tropical man. When cut across the middle? 

 it ought to show three rows of seeds, interspersed with 

 pulp, and faintly preserving some dim memory of the 

 dividing wall which once separated them. In practice, 

 however, the banana differs widely from this theoretical 



