255 
and in his writings used the word * banana " exclusively, for the edible 
fruit of Musas. 
Grisebach describes the stem of the plantain as “ green " and the 
e “ascending” (or curved upwards) “about a foot long." This 
g upwards is characteristic of the Horn plantain, but it is not 
distinctive enough to separate plantains and bananas in general. The 
prevailing. habit of the leaves, according to Sir William Hooker, is that 
he re “much longer and narrowed into the petiole” than in the 
hana 'The male flowers and the bracts are not so deciduous as in 
the fain ana, and the portion of the spike beyond the fruit is much 
shorter and usually covered with the remains of the bracts and dried up 
wers. The individual fruits again are very distinct. They have a 
firmer and less saccharine pulp and are not fit to eat without cooking. 
** Report on "e Agricultural Work in the Botanical Garden 
British Guiana,” for the year 1890, pp. 59-60, Messrs. Harrison arial 
Jenman state that it is only after a long and well- ‘trained experience can 
the plantain E distinguished in the pu from the banana when not in 
flower or frui 
“When in fruit, however, the case is different. There is then a 
charaeter, observable at sight, which ign requires to be pointed out for 
the merest novice in the subject to be able to tell which is which. 
'This viste is that, in the banana, after the fruit has set and begun to 
develop, the succeeding clusters of flowers, often a hundred or more in 
number, and their large embracing bracts are deciduous, i.e., drop awa 
leaving a clear absolutely naked, long extended and still elon 
12 or 18 inches beyond the fruit, the succeeding clusters of flowers and 
bracts all opening to the very end, and remaining persistent, withered and 
dry—the trash as a! is called in ais phraseology—being permanently 
attached to the In the banana the axis continues to grow as long 
as the fruit wig cluster after mae of flowers, with their braets, 
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 plantain the growth of the axis is arrested soon after 
the fruit sets, the ae ortive flowers opening, and remaining attached, from 
end to end of the st 
“ A single exeeption to the rule obtains in the case of the dwarf or 
Chinese banana (Musa avendishii), in other respects also specifically 
distinct, in which, as in plantains, the abortive flowers and their bracts 
are constantly persistent. Remembering this exception, and guarded 
from chance of mistake thereby, the untrained observer, seeing growing 
plants in fruit, may confidently determine which are plantains and which 
bananas, without attempting to assay the qualities of the frait, = 
which the great economic distinction above noticed 
mentioned before in the remarks on bananas, pe texture of the plantain 
is such that at whatever stage it is used, whethe r green or ripe, it must 
be cooked to make it palata table. It is this anny! in the plantain what 
makes the great economic difference between the two fruits 
