216 VEGETABLES AND FOOD PRODUCTS 



suitable for preserves. When approaching maturity the fruit 

 assumes a brownish or reddish tint, and possesses a pleasant 

 fragrance. The plant is a rapid grower, and attains a height of 

 about 50 feet. It thrives best and is most productive when grown 

 in rich soil, fully exposed to the sun and allowed to ramble over 

 an arbour or trellis. It is suited to a rather dry climate, though it 

 has flourished and fruited in Peradeniya Gardens, where it was 

 introduced a few years ago. 



Trichosanthes anguina. Snake-gourd; Club-gourd; "Patola,", 

 S- "Podivilangu" or "Podalangai" T. A quick-growing climb- 

 ing gourd, bearing long cylindrical, green (sometimes greenish- 

 white) fruits, which not unfrequently reach the length of five to 

 six feet. In an unripe state these pod-like fruits are sliced and 

 cooked in the manner of French beans, being also largely used as 

 a curry vegetable in the low-country. Seeds are sown in the 

 monsoons, either in rows in the open ground, or against low branch- 

 ing trees or shrubs. It is customary to suspend a small stone to 

 the end of each fruit whilst growing, so as to weight it down and 

 induce it to grow straighter, and perhaps longer, than it would 

 otherwise do (See illustration). 



Vegetable Marrow. See under Temperate and Snb-tropical 

 Vegetables. 



SECTION 3: ROOT OR TUBEROUS VEGETABLES 

 AND FOOD CROPS. 



Calathea allouya. (Scitaminae). "Topee Tamboo," or 

 4 'Tokee Tambo;" "Lleren" (S. American names). A perennial 

 about 2 feet high, with large oval Canna-like leaves, native of 

 tropical South America. The plant has been grown at Peradeniya 

 since 1893, when it was introduced. It produces regularly a 

 quantity of tubers which resemble small potatoes, but these as yet 

 give no promise of becoming here the popular vegetable they are 

 said to be in the plant's native country and in the West Indies, 

 where it is recorded to have been cultivated for a long period, 

 though not extensively. The tubers though edible are of a some- 

 what gritty nature, and seem to require endless boiling to render 

 them tender. To a novice they seem to have no flavour, but 

 people who have acquired a taste for them pronounce them 

 delicious. In the report of the Porto Rico Experiment Station 

 for 1903, it is stated that this peculiar plant is highly prized by the 

 Natives of the interior, being "sold in the streets of some of the 

 large towns, the crisp nut-like tubers ranking with ground-nuts in 



