PLANTAIN AND BANANA. 
61 
being frequently twelve or sixteen feet long, 
eighteen inches or two feet wide, of a beautiful 
pea-green colour when fresh, and a rich bright 
yellow when dry. The fruit is about nine inches 
long, and in shape somewhat like a cucumber, 
excepting that the angles are frequently well de¬ 
fined, which gives to the fruit, when ripe, the ap¬ 
pearance of a triangular or quadrangular prism of a 
bright delicate yellow colour. Sixty or seventy 
single fruit are occasionally attached to one stalk. 
Each plantain stem, or tree, produces only one 
bunch of fruit; and when the fruit is ripe, it is cut 
down, and its place supplied by the suckers that 
rise around the root whence it originally sprung. 
If the suckers, or offsets, be four or five feet high 
when the parent stem is cut down, they will bear 
in about twelve months. 
The fruit is not often allowed to ripen on the 
trees, but it is generally cut down as soon as it has 
reached its full size, and while yet green; the bunch 
is then hung up in the native houses to ripen, 
and is eaten as the fruit turns yellow. When 
they wish to accelerate their ripeness for a public 
entertainment, they cut them down green, wrap 
them in leaves, and bury them thirty-six or forty- 
eight hours in the earth, and on taking them out 
they are quite soft, and apparently ripe, but much 
more insipid than those which had gradually 
ripened on the tree, or even in the house. The 
kinds growing in the mountains are large, and, 
though rich and agreeable when baked, are most 
unpalatable when raw; they have a red skin, and 
a bright yellow pulp. Their native name is fei: 
their habits of growth are singular; for, while the 
fruit of all the other varieties is pendent from 
the stem, this rises erect from a short thick stalk 
