392 The Philippine Journal of Science i 9 i 5 
Blanco’s description of this form is translated as follows: 20 
Flowers: Each scale of the spathe covers in the neighborhood of twenty 
small flowers. Corolla like that of the variety ternatensis. Stamens and 
anthers the same as in the variety compressa. Fruit resembling the 
ternate and full of round seeds, very depressed and with navel. This 
banana plant is very common and spontaneous in some woods, producing 
perfect seeds; hence its name. The fruit, which is of ordinary size, is 
used for making vinegar. It is also edible and is delicious. A buffalo 
exclusively fed for some months on the trunk of this banana without 
any other food lost all his teeth, in spite of the fact that the animal 
was very young, which is of course very remarkable. Drinking the water 
gathered from the base of the cut stem is generally believed to cure the 
contraction of man’s sexual organ. 
T., botolian, botoan. 
Although placed by Blanco under Musa troglodytarum, this 
variety possesses little in common with that species. 
MUSA HUMILIS Perr. T., pitogo. Plate XVIII, figs. 1-5. 
Stoloniferous from the base, producing from 9 to 12 flowering 
stems in a stool. The trunk is cylindric, yellowish green in 
color, and reaches a height of from 330 to 390 cm and a 
diameter of from 19 to 23 cm at the base. 
The leaves are elongate-elliptic, usually roundly entire at the 
base and subtruncate at the apex, deep green and shiny on the 
upper surface and glaucous beneath. The matured blades 
measure 220 cm in length and from 64 to 67 in width. The 
petioles are from 55 to 60 cm long, scalloped in cross section. 
The inflorescence in a huge, pendant spike with fertile flowers 
toward the base and sterile staminate flowers toward the apex. 
The spathe is large, elongate-lanceolate, from 60 to 63 cm long, 
longitudinally pitted inside, green and glaucous outside. The 
time from sprouting to flowering varies from eight to twelve 
months. 
The flowers (Plate XVIII, figs. 2 and 4) are arranged in dense 
2-rowed fascicles, in 3-ranked spirals, and are of medium size, 
from 7 to 7.5 cm long and from 1 to 1.5 cm wide. The peduncle 
and perigonium are brownish yellow. The perigonium is tubular, 
with thin, widely rounded, inflated margin. Scale oblong, white, 
with a thin wide margin and long acuminate tip ; the margin is 
usually shallowly divided on the right side; strongly rounded 
on the surface. Stamens generally diverging, longer than peri- 
gonium and pistil; the pistil is split into three short branches 
with club-shape stigmas. Like M. sapientum the flowers beyond 
the 3 to 10 basal fascicles are sterile, the sterile deciduous flowers 
20 Fl. Filip, ed. 2 (1845) 172. 
