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Teodoro: Philippine Bananas 
387 
i 3 . Flesh not sweet, and requiring cooking; fruit usually 
very large and often few in a bunch, commonly green 
at maturity, evanescently yellow, quickly becoming 
black Musa paradisiaca L. 
h 2 . Plant more or less dwarfed; petioles short and strongly 
margined, the leaf blades crowded at summit of trunk. 
Musa cavendishii Lamb. 
MUSA ENSETE Gmel. Abyssinian banana. 
The Abyssinian banana is a very conspicuous ornamental 
plant. It is in cultivation at the College of Agriculture, but our 
specmens have not yet reached large size. It is described by 
Baker 15 as follows: 
*1. Musa Ensete, Gmel. Abyssinian Banana. Native name “Ensete.” 
Bot. Mag., t. 5223-4. North Gallery, No. 516. Whole plant 30-40 feet 
high. Stem swollen at the base, not stoloniferous. Leaves oblong acute, 
sometimes 20 feet long and 3 feet broad with a red midrib. Bracts densely 
imbricated 9 to 12 inches long, dark claret brown. Fruit coriaceous, dry, 
2 to 3 inches long. Seeds 1-4 black, glossy, nearly an inch broad with 
a prominent raised border round the hilum. Distribution : — Mountains of 
Abyssinia to the hills of equatorial Africa; southward of Victoria Nyanza 
Lake. The largest known banana. * * * 
This species is well adapted for subtropical countries, such as 
southern California, Florida, Algeria, and the Canary Islands 
and is often put out for the summer in London parks. When 
established in sheltered situations it is a very ornamental plant, 
having a noble and majestic habit. The fruit is useless for 
purposes of food. As the plant produces no offsets and perishes 
after fruiting it is propagated entirely from seed. 
MUSA GLAUCA Roxb. 
Musa trogloditarum dolioliformis Blanco. 
This remarkable ornamental banana seems to be widely but 
very sparingly scattered through Luzon. It is undoubtedly na- 
tive here. Merrill regards it as being undoubtedly Musa glauca 
of Roxburgh. A photograph of a specimen in the College of 
Agriculture grounds was presented in the Philippine Agricultural 
Review 6 (1913), No. 9, Plate I, where it is called “an unidenti- 
fied wild species.” The enlargement of the base of a stem is 
variable. The plant produces but a single trunk which dies at 
maturity. Blanco’s description of this form is translated as fol- 
lows : 16 
Stem slender at the base, a little farther above very thick, and then 
slender as in the other banana plants and the leaves and flowers similar. 
15 Bull. Kew Gardens, Add. ser. VI pt. 2 (1906) 12. 
15 FI. Filip, ed. 2 (1845) 174. 
