254 TROPICAL NATURE I 
and handsome flowers. The. bananas and plantains are well 
known as among the most luxuriant and beautiful productions 
of the tropics. Many species occur wild in the forests; all 
have majestic foliage and handsome flowers, while some pro- 
duce edible fruit. Of the ginger-worts (Zingiberacee and 
Marantacee), the well-known cannas of our sub-tropical 
gardens may be taken as representatives, but the equatorial 
species are very numerous and varied, often forming dense 
thickets in damp places, and adorning the forest shades with 
their elegant and curious or showy flowers. The maranths 
produce “arrowroot,” while the ginger-worts are highly 
aromatic, producing ginger, cardamums, grains of paradise, 
turmeric, and several medicinal drugs. The Musacex pro- 
duce the most valuable of tropical fruits and foods. The 
banana is the variety which is always eaten as a fruit, having 
a delicate aromatic flavour; the plantain is a larger variety, 
which is best cooked. Roasted in the green state it is an 
excellent vegetable, resembling roasted chestnuts; when ripe 
it is sometimes pulped and boiled with water, making a very 
agreeable sweet soup; or it is roasted, or cut into slices and 
fried, in either form being a delicious tropical substitute for 
fruit pudding. These plants are annuals, producing one im- 
mense bunch of fruit. This bunch is sometimes four or five feet 
long, containing near two hundred plantains, and often weighs 
about a hundredweight. They grow very close together, and 
Humboldt calculated that an acre of plantains would supply 
more food than could be obtained from the same extent of 
ground by any other known plant. Well may it be said that 
the plantain is the glory of the tropics, and well was the 
species named by Linnzeus—Musa paradisiaca ! 
Arums 
Another very characteristic and remarkable group of 
tropical plants are the epiphytal and climbing arums. 
These are known by their large, arrow-shaped, dark green 
and glossy leaves, often curiously lobed or incised, and 
sometimes reticulated with large open spaces, as if pieces had 
been regularly eaten out of them by some voracious insects. 
Sometimes they form clusters of foliage on living or dead 
trees, to which they cling by their aerial roots. Others climb 
