232 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



[Oct. 1, 1865. 



THE PLANTAIN, 



{M?!sci paradisiacal 



OE all plants which are the 

 produce of the "glowiug 

 Orient," none are superior in in- 

 terest to the Plantain and Banana, 

 two nearly allied species of Mmcf, 

 the illustration of one of -which 

 {Mtisa paradisiaca) stands at the 

 head of this paper. Whether the 

 generic name was derived from 

 Musa, the physician of Augustus, 

 or from the Arabic muza, which 

 signifies "taste," is scarcely of 

 sufficient importance to occupy us 

 in its discussion. 



Of the several species of Plan- 

 tain, or Mtisa, the present has 

 received the name o^ paradisiaca 

 under the supposition that it was 

 the " tree of life," or the " tree of 

 the knowledge of good and evil." St. Pierre 

 observes that the violet cone at the end of a branch 

 of plantains, with the stigmas peering through like 



gleaming eyes, might well have suggested to the 

 guilty imagination of Eve, the semblance of a 

 serpent, temptnig her to pluck the forbidden fruit 

 it bore, as an erect and golden crest. 



Though some of the species leach between 

 twenty and thiity feet in height, they are only 

 heibaceous plants, growing up, floweiing, fiuit- 

 ing, and then djnig away to give place to other 

 shoots pioceedmg from the paient root. Of 

 true stem thcie is none; what appears to be 

 a stem is only formed by the overlapping and 

 embiacmg sheaths of the leafbtalLs, up the centre 

 of which each new leaf proceeds directly from 

 the root-stock. There is hardly a cottage in India 

 that has not its grove of plantains ; the natives 

 almost live upon them, and they are regarded 

 as emblems of plenty and fertility. Dried plan- 

 tains (that is to say the fruit) form an article of 

 internal commerce, and, in a few instances, have 

 been exported. In our opinion, they are prefer- 

 able to figs as a dried dessert fruit, but hitherto 

 are scarcely known in England, When deprived of 



