August, 1910 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



13 



or Japanese origin; only lo per cent. Euro- 

 pean or horticultural origin. 



INSTEAD OF 



Weeping trees 



Variegated trees and 

 shrubs, e.g., purple 

 beech andgoldenelder 



Cut-leaved maple, syca- 

 more, alder, hawthorn 

 oak, and linden and 

 other horticultural 

 varieties 



PLANT CHIEFLY 



Normal trees 



Green-leaved plants 

 with lovely flowers or 

 fruits 



Their normal forms; or 

 else trees that nor- 

 mally have fine leaves, 

 e.g., bald cypress, 

 Japan varnish tree 



A NEW AND BETTER HOBBY 



The rich man always wants to do some- 

 thing "unique." Here is his chance. Every- 

 body uses this showy material — but in the 

 wrong way. Let him show the right way. 

 Let him make a garden of specimens. I 

 guarantee that he will like it better than the 

 Morgan collection of jewels at the American 

 Museum of Natural History. For living 

 jewels are better than dead jewels 



Be a collector. Collect the plants that 



seem to you the loveliest in the whole world. 

 But give them an appropriate setting. Do 

 not make an outdoor museum with them. 

 Make a series of gorgeous pictures. 



Perhaps you would rather see both styles 

 before you decide. Go to Lenox if you 

 want to see a bad case of purple-heechitis. 

 (But you can see that anywhere.) Then go 

 to the Arnold Arboretum. If you don't like 

 that better, all right. No hard feelings. Still 

 friends, but we differ. 



The Two Wonder Fruits of the Tropics — By John Gifford, 



Flor- 

 ida 



THE FIRST OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THOSE FRUITS OF THE TROPICS THAT ARE OF ECONOMIC VALUE 

 TO THE WARMER REGIONS OF THE UNITED STATES AND WHICH CAN BE GROWN AS PROFITABLE CROPS 



T NEVER cease to marvel at the banana 

 *■ and the papaw- Statisticians who 

 have predicted a famine from the increase 

 of population without a corresponding 

 increase in the production of breadstuffs 

 have neglected one potent factor — the 

 banana. 



The papaw or papaya is another suc- 

 culent, quick-growing, prolific tropical fruit- 

 producer, belonging in the same class of 

 marvels with the banana, but is not related 

 to it. 



The banana has been the cause of the for- 

 mation of steamship lines to the tropics, it 

 has caused the building of railroads within 

 the tropics: it has figured conspicuously in 

 Spanish-American politics, and even the 

 dreaded Black Hand is known to many as 

 "the Society of the Banana." 



GROWS ON A RUBBISH HEAP 



The banana is marvelous because of its 

 prolific nature, yet it forms no seeds, and 

 the great bunch of foodstuff when not used 



From one papaw plant (Carica Papaya) fruits can 

 be gathered every day for months. A young plant 

 with only twenty fruits 



by man or other animals simply rots, and the 

 stalk which produced it dies to give space to 

 another to repeat the performance. 



With me the banana is a favorite crop. I 

 dig a deep hole in moist soil or muck. Into 

 this hole I empty my waste basket containing 

 old letters, newspapers, returned manu- 

 script, etc.; also the kitchen barrel containing 

 tin cans and other stuff that the chickens will 

 not eat; then I throw in sweepings, Takings, 

 old fertilizer bags, old iron, useless wood, 

 bottles, and trash of any and every kind. 

 On top of this I put a good forkful of stable 

 manure and then some sand or muck. 

 Then the banana root, often no bigger than 

 your two fists, dry and lifeless-looking, after 

 having been kicked about in the sun for a 

 few days, waiting for planting time, is stuck 

 into the ground and covered with a few 

 inches of dirt. 



In three months, if the weather is good, 

 you may sit in the grateful shade of this big 

 green-leaved plant. I almost called it a 

 tree, because its stalk is as big as a man's 

 leg and its foliage may be several feet above 

 your head, but according to the definitions 

 a tree must have a central woody axis, and 

 to the banana there is no woody texture; it is 

 all as soft as a cabbage and is usually com- 

 pletely consumed in a short time when left 

 to chickens. 



THE YIELD OF A YEAR 



Within a year a bunch of fruit is produced 

 which a man can hardly carry — a bunch so 

 big that it often bends the plant to the ground 

 unless propped by forked sticks. As soon 

 as the bunch and stalk are cut, up shoots 

 another and another. A dozen or more 

 suckers are at the same time produced so 

 that more and more may be planted. What 

 an active chemical laboratory this plant is 

 to form so much leaf and stalk and fruit 

 from soil and atmosphere in less than a 

 year! 



It is a sight seldom forgotten to see 

 picturesque Indians in Central America 

 working in banana plantations where 

 the plants have met to form a forest-like 

 canopy. In Mexico there are young coffee 

 trees in the shade of these banana plants. 

 I have seen the semi-nude Karif women of 



British Honduras meet the ship far from 

 shore with their dugouts loaded to the 

 gunwales with bananas. 



PLANTING IN DEEP HOLES 



But the most marvelous kind of banana 

 culture may be seen in the Bahamas, on the 

 Island of Eleuthera. Here there are deep 

 holes called "banana holes" some of which 

 are fifty or sixty or more feet in depth. 

 At the bottom of these holes is moist rich 

 earth. They are just like deep dry wells. 

 A banana root is planted in a basket of soil, 

 which is lowered with a rope to the bottom. 

 The root sprouts and the stem shoots up 

 like magic till it reaches the top of the hole. 

 Then the foliage spreads out in the sunshine 

 like flowers in a vase. There it grows and 

 forms its bunch protected from the wind 

 in the cool moist recesses of the hole. The 

 bunch is formed at the surface of the ground 



A Cavendish banana (Musa Cavendishl). This 

 bunch will almost reach the ground -when fully 

 developed 



