490 'FOOD PLANTS OF ANCIENT AMERICA. 



the culture and differentiation of the varieties of the taro and the 

 sweet potato, and were agriculturally mere outposts of the American 

 tropics. 



The presence of the banana might be thought to explain the rela- 

 tively small importance of root crops in the Old World, since it furnishes 

 with far less effort of cultivation and preparation a highly nutritious 

 and palatable food. It appears, however, that the use of root crops 

 must have preceded the domestication of the banana, for, although the 

 seed-bearing wild bananas are worthless as fruits and hence would not 

 have been domesticated as such, nevertheless more species of them 

 than of any other genus of food plants were brought into cultivation. 

 The clue to thid paradox is afforded by the fact that bananas are still 

 cultivated as root crops in the Old World tropics, particularly' in New 

 Caledonia and Abyssinia." 



That the varieties used like vegetables or root crops are as old or 

 older than those grown for fruit is indicated by the fact that, like the 

 sweet potato, taro, sugar cane, and ginger, they seldom produce flowers. 

 Furthermore, among all savage tribes the varieties valued by civilized 

 peoples as fruits are relativelj^ little used, far greater popularity being 

 enjoyed by the so-called "plantains," not edible in the raw state, even 

 when ripe, though nearly always cooked and eaten while still imma- 

 ture, or before the starch has changed to sugar. They are also in 

 manj" countries dried and made into a meal or flour often compared to 

 arrowroot. 



In dietary and culinary senses the breadfruit also is as much a veg- 

 etable as the taro or the sweet potato; as a fruit it would be no more 

 likely to be domesticated than its distant relative, the osage orange. 

 The farinaceous character of the breadfruit also probably explains its 

 relatively greater importance among the Polynesians than in its orig- 

 inal Malayan home, as shown bj' the propagation of numerous seedless 

 varieties. The popularity of the breadfruit among the Polynesian* was 



a The suggestion that the primitive culture race which domesticated the banana 

 came from America also receives definite support from the fact that an American 

 plant [Heliconia bihai), somewhat similar to the banana but without an edible fruit, 

 reached the islands of the Pacific in prehistoric times. Though no longer cultivated 

 by the Polynesians, it has become established in the mountains of Samoa and in 

 many nf the more western archipelagoes. In New Caledonia the tough leaves are still 

 woven into hats, but tlie I'aiidiinin', native in the IMalay region, affords a better 

 material for general purposes and has displaced Heliconia in cultivation among the 

 Polyuesians. In the time of Oviedo the natives of the West Indies made hats, mats, 

 baskets, and thatch from the leaves of Heliconia, and the starchy rootstocks were 

 eaten. 



Prut'essiir Schumann, of Berlin, has recently recognized the prehistoric introduc- 

 tion 111' Hi'liniiiia bihiii from America to the Pacific Islands. 



"Originally native in tropical America, but extensively naturalized since very 

 ancient times {nralleii Zcilcii) in Polynesia and Malaysia. " (Schumann und Lauter- 

 bach, Die Flora der Dentschen Schutzgebiete in der Sudsee, 224, 1901.) 



