214 HORTICULTURAL MANUAL. 



and it is very interesting to watch from day to day the 

 giant flower-biid unfold as it elongates by the expansion of 

 the covering bracts under which the flowers appear. As 

 the separate tiers of bracts drop, the circle of ovaries 

 develop into young bananas. All this goes on as naturally 

 under glass as in its natal clime. If the large bunch of 

 fruit ripens or aborts, the great stalk with its leaf-appen- 

 dages dies like our raspberries after fruiting, while new 

 shoots are coming forward from the base to bear the next 

 year's crop. 



The fruit has no perfect seeds and the varieties are 

 propagated from the suckers that spring up from the base 

 of the stools. 



212. The Pineapple. — This delicious tropical fruit is 

 native to Brazil, Mexico, and probably some of the West 

 India islands. But doubts of this fact have arisen on 

 account of the wide distribution of the plant to India, 

 China, Africa, and other tropical climates early in the 

 sixteenth century. But this was made possible by the easy 

 and safe transportation of the plant by means of the fruit. 

 The partially ripe fruit will bear distant shipping, and the 

 fact became known to the early voyagers that the leafy 

 crowns of the fruit will grow when cut off and planted in 

 warm climates. The suckers, also planted in earth, can 

 be safely carried on long voyages, which is not true of many 

 economic plants. It seems a common belief at the North 

 that the pineapple grows on trees. Hence the surprise of 

 tourists when they find it growing on a low plant, not as 

 tall as eight-rowed corn, on a stalk from one to four feet 

 high, like a humble cabbage in some respects. But unlike 

 the cabbage the stem rises from the centre of a rosette of 

 sword -shaped stiff leaves with rough edges. The stalk that 

 bears dies as with the banana and raspberry, and like the 

 latter new suckers spring up for the next year's bearing. 



