April 20, 1892.J 



Garden and Forest. 



183 



known ornamental qualities. But it is interesting as a cu- 

 riosity, because the very small and inconspicuous flowers are 

 produced on the midribs of the leaves about in the centre of 

 the upper surfaces. The species is dioecious, the staminate 

 and pistillate blossoms being produced on separate plants. 

 The specimen at Munden is three or four feet high and is 

 staminate, and has therefore produced no fruit. This curious 

 shrub has not yet proved hardy at the Arnold Arboretum, but 

 it has flowered, producing staminate blossoms. As there ap- 

 pear to be no records to the contrary, it would seem that the 

 plant has not yet fruited in Europe ■ r America. The fruit is 

 a rather dry little drupe, but it is said that the natives of the 

 mountains of Japan use the young leaves as a vegetable. Hy- 

 drangea scandens and Schizophragma hydrangeoides are two 

 Asiatic plants about which there is often much confusion. 

 The Schizophragma has not yet been found very hardy at Miin- 

 den. In ordering either of these species from nurseries one 

 is liable to get the other. But the Hydrangea may always be 

 known by its very few sterile or ray flowers having four large 

 rounded or refuse bracts together and in opposite pairs, while 

 in the Schizophragma the leafy bracts are solitary, oval, nar- 

 row and somewhat pointed. 



Another plant which may be mentioned, because extremely 

 rare in cultivation, is Eleutherococcus senticosus, a hardy 

 Araliaceous plant from northern Japan and China, which I 

 found here seven feet high and in fruit ; while Acanthopanax 

 ricinifolia, a member of the same family, is fifteen feet in 

 height and gives every promise of becoming the large tree 

 with a tropical aspect, which it is said to be in Japan. This 

 species has proved quite hardy at Boston, and it is probably 

 capable of withstanding quite a number of degrees below zero 

 of Fahrenheit. 



The species mentioned give but a slight idea of the char- 

 acter of the collection of shrubs and trees under Dr. Zabel's 

 care, and yet the rare herbaceous perennials have not been re- 

 ferred to. The collection contains a very interesting and 

 complete series of species and varieties of Spirsas, one of the 

 most distinct of the least known being S. longigemmis of 

 Maxiniowicz. Numerous hybrids of these, and also of Bush 

 Honeysuckles, have been procured and propagated, and from 

 these some improved forms possibly may be introduced to add 

 beauty to our gardens. 



Arnold Arboretum. y. G. Jack, 



Plantains. 



THE following extract is taken from the last report of 

 the Botanical Garden at Demerara : 



The generally accepted opinion of botanists is that the Ba- 

 nana and Plantain are but forms of one species. Yet, from an 

 economic point of view, the two are widely separated, for, in 

 regard to utility as a food-product, the banana cannot be com- 

 pared with the plantain. Without explaining all the differ- 

 ences, it may be briefly stated that while the banana is a 

 pleasant, agreeable and much-appreciated fruit, it has, judging 

 by the preference of the people of torrid lands, little economic 

 value as a food-product ; the plantain, on the other hand, is 

 regarded as intrinsically one of the best natural food-products 

 in the world. Yet the opinion of the botanists is in a way sup- 

 ported by the non-scientific observer, for, except in rare in- 

 stances, only after long and well-trained field experience can 

 one plant be distinguished from the other when not in flower 

 or fruit. When in fruit, however, the case is different. There 

 is then a character, observable at sight, which only requires to 

 be pointed out for the veriest novice in the subject to be able 

 to tell which is which. In the Banana, after the fruit has set, 

 the succeeding clusters of flowers, often a hundred or more in 

 number, and their large embracing bracts, drop away, leaving 

 a clear, absolutely naked, long extended and still elongating 

 stem or axis, hanging tail-like two to three feet beyond the 

 fruit, with the firmly compacted mass of unopened bracts and 

 flowers, bud-like, at the end ; while in the Plantain the stem 

 ceases to extend more than twelve or eighteen inches beyond 

 the fruit, the succeeding clusters of flowers and bracts all open- 

 ing to the very end, and remaining persistent, withered and 

 dry — the trash as it is called in colonial phraseology — perma- 

 nently attached to the stem. In the Banana the axis continues 

 to grow as long as the fruit hangs, cluster after cluster of flow- 

 ers, with their bracts, opening and dropping away, a mass, like 

 an enlarged Nelumbium-bud, still unopened, remaining at the 

 far extended end when the bunch is cut ; while in the Plaintain 

 the growth of the axis is arrested soon after the fruit sets, the 

 abortive flowers opening, and remaining attached, from end to 

 end of the stem. A single exception to the rule obtains in the 



case of the Dwarf or Chinese Banana (Musa Cavendishii), in 

 which, as in Plantains, the abortive flowers and their bracts are 

 constantly persistent. The texture of the plantain is such that 

 at whatever stage it is used, whether green or ripe, it must be 

 cooked to make it palatable. It is this quality in the plantain 

 which makes the great economic difference between the two 

 fruits. Plantains are chiefly used by the populace while still 

 green — i. e., cut at some period before they are full grown. 

 They are cooked either by boiling or roasting, chiefly the 

 former. To successfully peel a green plantain without soiling 

 it, the operation must be performed with wet hands or with 

 the fruit immersed in water. The plantain contains a measure 

 of tannic acid, and consequently in boiling in a metal pot has 

 a tendency to turn very dark. This may, however, be pre- 

 vented by boiling a little fat with the fruit — say a bitof fat pork. 

 Green plantains are also used for making soup. For this pur- 

 pose they are boiled and then pounded in a mortar, when they 

 form a homogeneous mass, like dough, which is put into soup 

 and eaten with it. In the mature, but still green stage, plan- 

 tains are roasted and eaten with butter, pepper and salt, and in 

 some cases cheese. In this state they are delicious. The 

 plantain parts with its heat very rapidly, and in cooling it loses, 

 to the palate, much of its best taste. It is spoiled by rewarm- 

 ing. For this reason roast plantains are usually served 

 wrapped in a table-napkin, for, to be enjoyed at all, they must 

 be eaten before they cool. When ripe — that is, when the skin 

 has turned yellow — a fruity character is assumed, and then they 

 are used either baked whole in an oven, or cut in slices and 

 fried. Baked ripe plantain has much the taste of baked apple, 

 but with a distinctive flavor, and a much more tenacious na- 

 ture. Lastly, gathered green, dried and ground or pounded, 

 an excellent meal or flour is produced, which makes delicious 

 custards, puddings, gruel, etc., and is highly palatable and 

 nutritious. 



Plantains being the staple food of the Creole population, 

 Plantain cultivation is a firmly established industry. Three or 

 four varieties are grown, one or two of which, however, only 

 on a very small scale. Two color-varieties, presenting hardly 

 any distinction in the character of the fruit, but with the stems 

 and stalks of the leaves blackish in one and green in the other, 

 are most generally grown, and form the bulk of the cultiva- 

 tion. They pass under the names of the Black and White, 

 Common or Cow, and sometimes Maiden Plantain. The others 

 are the Giant, or Horse, and the Barooma, both very large- 

 fruited kinds, the latter of which is not much grown. Plan- 

 tains give a heavier yield than Bananas from the same land. 

 They delight in the stiff, newly empoldered clay lands of this 

 colony, not objectingto the slightly saline element found where 

 the sea or river has invaded the place periodically at spring- 

 tides while it was lying fallow under the natural bush-growth. 

 Such lands yield heavily, but the crop is liable to suffer, if 

 the seasons for the first two years after planting prove very wet, 

 from the Plantain-disease of the colony. On dry land it does 

 not do much damage. Introduced to such land it soon disap- 

 pears again. The disease which affects Cocoanut-trees, from 

 which many are from time to time lost in ill-drained situations, 

 appears to be identically the same. In both cases it takes the 

 form of internal decay, the substance turning to a sodden, of- 

 fensively scented, putrid mass. The plantains produced by 

 diseased trees are black inside, but not soft like the interior of 

 the stems and root-stocks of the plants. They are, of course, 

 quite unfit for food. Its nature has not yet been determined, 

 though it has been observed closely in the fields, and samples 

 of the affected parts have been examined by distinguished 

 mycologists to ascertain whether or not it be of fungoid origin. 

 The aboriginal Indian inhabitants of the interior do not, as a 

 rule, cultivate this fruit, though they grow here and there in 

 their cassava fields pineapples and a few bananas. 



The Forests of Lower California. 



A LONG the boundary between Upper and Lower California 

 -'"^ no forests exist and the variety of trees is very limited. 

 A few miles south of the boundary, on the broad table-lands 

 of auriferous gravel, begins the beautiful Pifion forest, com- 

 posed mainly of a Nut Pine {Pinus Parryana). 



These trees only partially shade theground, forming an open 

 forest, perhaps tliirty miles in width in places, and extending 

 from near the boundary line southward along the backbone 

 of the peninsula, with only an occasional break, to the south 

 end of the Sierra San Pedro de Martin. This forest is contin- 

 uous for nearly fifty miles, the plateau which it covers varying 

 in altitude from 3,500 feet to near 7,000 feet. 



