TWO SPECIES OF BAXAXAS. 403 



politan plant throughout the tropic world. Its native habitat is 

 supposed to be Asia. The Oriental Christians have a tradition that 

 this tree, which they call the Lignum Vitcc, was that whose fruit 

 was forbidden to our first parents. Hence the name of Musa para- 

 disiaca, given by botanists to one of the two species of the genus ; 

 the other is the Banana of the wise men, Musa sapientum. However 

 this may be, it is certain that if the use of the banana was at any 

 time interdicted to man, the prohibition has been annulled for many 

 generations ; and its fruits form one of the most wholesome and most 

 general articles of food in tropical countries. Although the wild 

 banana maintains its place honourably in the forests of these regions, 

 it is not a tree, but an herbaceous plant. It propagates itself through 

 its suckers, and its stem perishes immediately after fructification. 

 Its mode of vegetation is analogous to that of the Liliaceae. From a 

 bulbous and fleshy platform issue, beneath, its fibrous roots ; above, 

 enormous leaves, often nearly a yard wide and two to three yards long. 

 The petioles of these leaves are adhesive. By folding themselves one 

 over another, and successively drying up, they grow into a stem which 

 sometimes attains the dimensions of the trunk of an ordinary tree 

 (about seven feet) and the stature of twelve to sixteen feet, and which 

 is traversed throughout its centre by a stalk springing from the bulb. 

 This stalk rises again several inches above the terminal leaf, then 

 bends, sinks towards the ground, and terminates in a stem which 

 carries at its extremity the male flowers, and at its base the female 

 flowers, then the fruit. The latter, collected in clusters of twelve to 

 fourteen, are elongated, of a prismatic triangular form, enveloped in 

 a rind, green at first, then yellow, and internally consist of a soft, 

 feculent, sugary pulp, very nutritious, and agreeable to the taste. 



In its native clime the banana is born, grows, flourishes, fructifies, 

 and dies in the space of twelve or eighteen months. In the climates 

 most akin to ours, and in our European gardens, its development is 

 not only on a smaller scale, but occupies a longer period, and it has 

 been known to reach the age of ten or a dozen years. 



By the side of these weak-stemmed plants, with their soft and 



