Volume 2
Cyclopædia of India and of eastern and southern Asia, commercial, industrial and scientific : products of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, useful arts and manufactures / edited by Edward Balfour.
- Date:
- 1857
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cyclopædia of India and of eastern and southern Asia, commercial, industrial and scientific : products of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, useful arts and manufactures / edited by Edward Balfour. Source: Wellcome Collection.
51/872 page 1247
![tains and Bananas are now extensively cultivat- ed in various parts of South America, and at an elevation of 3000 feet in the Caraccas. They are abundant in the West India Islands, as well as at considerable elevations in Mexico. To the negroes in the West Indies, tho plantain is inva- luable, and like bread to the European, is with them denominated the staff of life. In Guiana, Demerara, Jamaica, Trinidad, and other princi- pal colonies, many thousand acres are planted with the Plaintain. But, before proceeding to treat of the Plaintain and Banana, it is desirable to notice the species which yields Manilla Hemp, showing how valuable some of these plants are, on account of their fibres —Roi/le Fib. Plants. (5199) MUSACE/E, Musads, a natural or- der of Endogens, of which the genus Musa is the representative. They are stemless or nearly stemless plants, with leaves sheathing at the base and forming a kind of spurious stem, often very large ; their limb separated from the taper petiole by a round tumour, and having five paral- lel veins diverging regularly from the midrib to- wards the margin. Flowers spathaceous : pe- riantli 6-parted, adherent, petaloid, in two dis- tinct rows, more or less irregular ; stamens 6, in- serted upon the middle of the divisions, some always becoming abortive; anthers linear, turn- ed inwards, 2-celled, often having a membranous petaloid crest; ovary inferior, 3-celled, many- seeded, rarely 3-seeded; ovulus anatropal; style simple; stigma usually 3-lobed. Fruit either a 3-celled capsule, with a coculicidal dehiscence or succulent and indehiscent. Seeds continuous, surrounded by hairs, with an integument which is usually crustaceous ; embryo orthotropal, ob- long-linear, or mushroom-shaped, with the radi- cular end touching the hilum, having pierced through the mealy albumen. The species are stately and always beautiful herbaceous plants with the aspect ol a plantain, and with large bracts and spathes, which are usually coloured of some gay tint. The characteristic marks of the order arc to have an inferior ovary, with very irregular and unsyramctrical flowers, whose sexu- al apparatus is not consolidated. It is chiefly by these distinctions that it is known from Amaryllxdacex. In some the fruit is fleshy as m the Plantain; in others it is dry and capsular. Only 4 genera are known of this order, consisting of about 20 species, all of strik- ing beauty. Ileliconia is the principal American foim nearly all the others being found in the Old t W f 1 u ,,eSe Le Sp,ecies are conspicuous for their brilliantly-coloured rigid boat-shaped bracts -sometimes yellow, sometimes scarlet and even a Canenl T™* of Streliteia are Upe plants with rigid glaucous leaves, and sin- gularly irregular flowers of considerable size coloured ye low and blue or pure white. Finally’ noble palm-like plant, is remarkable for the bril- 12 limit blue colour of the lacerated pulpy aril which envelopes the seeds ; the latter are used for dye- ing in Madagascar, but none of the order are of any important use to man, with the exception of the Musas themselves. [Musa.] (5500) MUSA PARADISIACA. Lin. Pesang, Malay, Vallacoy, Mai., Cadali, San«. Valie pullum, Tam. Mnoi, Duk. Arittie puudoo, Tier.. The Jlotoer. Vnlei poo, Tam. Ariitie poo, Tel, Plantain flower. Eng. Cadali, Sans A ins lie’s Mat. Med. p. 261. Of this delicious fruit there is a great variety in lower India, three of the most esteemed sorts are the Rajah plantain, the red and the yellow. Plantains in their green state are sliced and made into curry, when they eat not unlike potatoes. The natives particularly the Mahometans consi- der plantains as highly nutritious and eat them with cows milk and sugar as we do strawberries. —Ainslie, p. 234. The plantain and Banana, though probably only varieties of one species, ara yet sufficiently distinguished by the size and flavour ol their fruit, to be considered familiarly as distinct. They are, from their luxuriant-growing and large overhanging leav- es, considered among the most characteristic forms of tropical vegetation. They are also among the most valuable of plants, inasmuch as in some countries they supply the place of bread, and form the chief nutriment of the people. But not only does the Plantain supply the place of bread and serve as fruit, but also in a preserved state as desert. The fai filaceous parts may, moreover, be separat- ed m the form of flour, and are probably as nu- tritious as rice. The shoots or tops of the young plants, both in the East and the West, are occasionally given as fodder to sheep and cat- tle, and are described by some as a delicate edi- ble. The leaves, in a dried state, are used for thatching and bedding. Both the stem and leaves abound in fibre, useful for textile or cordage purposes, while the tow which is separated in preparing the fibres, forms an excellent material for the finest or the toughest kinds of paper, l ie illustrious Humboldt has long since remark- ed, that the Banana is for the torrid zone what the Gerealia are for Europe and Western Asia, or rice for Bengal and China, forming a valuable cultivation wherever the mean temperature of the year is about 75°. He has also cal- culated that the same extent of ground, when planted with the Banana, will sup- port a far greater number of people than when planted with wheat. As this is a point of great economical interest, it has been a subject of subsequent investigation. The productive- ness has been found to differ with the mean temperature -17 of the place. Boussiugault has](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28708921_0002_0051.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
