WHERE BANANAS GROW. 



489 



and, separating more and more, at length falls away, leaving a 

 scar to mark its place, and, just within the scar, a group of tubu- 

 lar, pale yellow flowers. Their petals soon wither and fall away, 

 leaving the ovaries as a row of tiny bananas which will become 

 one of the "hands" of the future bunch. Thus successive bracts 

 fall away from the bud and successive rows of bananas appear. 

 But after a time, though the bracts continue to fall and to un- 

 cover new flower clusters, these are found to be sterile, and young 

 fruits are no longer formed. A bud may, then, contain only two 

 or three fertile bracts, or it may have as many as fifteen or more 





FIG. 1. BCTT OF BANANA PLANT, WITH "EYE," AND "SET" READY FOK PLANTING. 



that is, the number of fruit clusters in the ripened bunch may 

 vary between those extremes. The development of sterile flowers 

 continues indefinitely. Each bract, as it falls, uncovers a fresh 

 group to furnish pollen for the impregnation of the fertile flowers 

 of a neighboring plant, as those of their own bunch, uncovered 

 first, have already received the fructifying stimulus from a neigh- 

 bor. Thus Nature provides for the cross-fertilization on which, 

 as Mr. Darwin first showed us, she lays so much stress, sending 

 the fecundating dust from plant to plant by those loveliest and 

 swiftest of her messengers, the humming birds, and rewarding 



VOL. XLIY. 38 



