THE PLANT 19 



On the other hand, the plantain (Musa paradisiaca) is 

 no doubt descended from a different individual. Hence 

 the pollen of the plantain might be effective in producing 

 seed in the banana. Pollen from species producing an 

 edible fruit might also be tried. A description is given in 

 Chapter XXXIV of the species of Musa, indicating those 

 which bear edible fruit ; pollen might be used from any 

 of these to pollinate the female flower of the banana. 



It is not much more than a quarter of a century ago 

 that Messrs. Harrison and Bo veil discovered in Barbados 

 that sugar-cane produced seed. That discovery came 

 most opportunely about the time that the Bourbon cane 

 became so subject to disease, and the selected new varieties 

 raised from seed were to a great extent immune, and also 

 in some instances gave larger yields of sugar. This shows 

 the importance of experimenting similarly with the banana. 



O. W. Barrett states * that " the following directions 

 for causing a banana to produce seeds were given by a 

 Porto Rican native : Get a stool of bananas growing 

 rapidly in shallow soil by the addition of artificial fer- 

 tilizers ; let one bunch of fruits ' set,' but before that 

 ripens cut down all but one of the stems in the clump ; 

 the remaining shoot, ' thinking it has but one more chance 

 to perpetuate its kind before being killed,' on account of 

 the tremendous shock to the more or less connected stem 

 bases in the clump, at once produces a small bunch of 

 somewhat abnormal fruits some of which will contain 

 genuine seeds. As a matter of fact, it is a usual thing to 

 find seeds in the commonest of the Philippine bananas, 

 the Saba." 



* Philipp. Agri. Rev^ v. 383 (1912). 



f A paper by A. d'Angremond on experiments in Surinam, appeared in 

 Ber. Bot. Ges., xxx. 686, while these pages were in the Press, in which 

 it is stated that while in the Canary, Jamaican, and Apple bananas fruits 

 were produced without pollination, the use of pollen was necessary for 

 the production of fruit containing seeds in M. basjoo and M. ornata. 

 Most of the pollen of the Jamaican and Apple bananas was sterile, and only 

 a few of the ovules in these plants have an embryo-sac. However, the 

 dusting of the ovaries of these cultivated fruit plants with pollen of M. 

 basjoo and M. ornata was sufficient to produce seeds. 



