Plantain

“ It has only a perennial root which, once planted, needs hardly any care, and yet produces the most abundant crop of any known tropical plant. On the average, a plantain annually bears nearly twenty kilogrammes, and sometimes a hundredweight, of most nutritious fruit, which at the same time possesses a delicious flavor. The stem then dies and the root gives out new shoots. No doubt the American race, closely allied as it is with the Mongolian, carried with it, when it migrated to America, the plantain as a cultivated plant from Asia where it grew wild. ”

“ Under a friendly palm the simple peasants find needed shelter from the sun by day and the dews by night, while a bunch of plantains or bananas plucked fresh from the tree will furnish an abundant meal, and the water of a green cocoa-nut all the drink they desire. The plantain tree grows to about twenty feet in height, its round, soft stem being composed of the elongated foot-stalks of the leaves, and its cone of a nodding flower-spike or cluster of purple blossoms that are very graceful and beautiful. ”

“ The plantain, with its profuse clusters of finger-like fruit, grows low like the banana, which it vastly resembles, and the entire trunk of both are renewed yearly; the old stock, after yielding its crop, decaying rapidly, and forming the most nutritious matter for the soil that can be had. Many of the hedges through the plantations are formed of aloes, of a large and luxuriant growth, with dagger-like points, and stiff, long leaves, bidding defiance to ingress or egress, yet ever ornamented with a fragrant cup-like flower. ”

“ True, the plantain is by no means as nourishing as wheat: which reduces the actual difference between their value per acre to twenty-five to one. But under his plantains he can grow other vegetables. He has no winter, and therefore some crop or other is always coming forward. ”

“ Its succulent roots and dew-attracting leaves render it useful in keeping the ground moist during the greatest heats. The plantain may be deemed the most valuable of fruits, since it will, in some measure, supply the place of grain in time of scarcity. To the negroes in the West Indian Islands the plantain is invaluable, and, like bread to the Europeans, is with them denominated the staff of life. In Jamaica, Demerara, Trinidad, and other principal colonies, many thousand acres are planted with these trees. ”

“ But the plantain does not grow wild, though in tropical America it finds the same conditions of vegetation as in its native country, and hence thrives there. The wild plantain in India has small stony seeds, and is distributed widely by monkeys, bats, and insects. which like the fruit but cannot destroy the seeds. In Asia wild, seed-bearing plantains are usually found growing in groups. In America, which has a much greater area of wilderness, the plantain must have spread far and wide, seeing that it has persisted in the wild state in the far more densely-inhabited East Indies. ”

“ Among the tropical and equinoctial fruits, the plantain and banana ornament the orchards with their large green leaves, being the emblem of luxuriant fertility: this luscious and wholesome fruit ministers to the appetite of the rich, and satisfies the hunger of the poor. No native will drink water immediately after eating the plantain, nor any thing but water after the banana. ”

“ The banana proper is eaten raw, as a fruit, and is allowed accordingly to ripen thoroughly before being picked for market; the plantain, which is the true food-stuff of all the equatorial region in both hemispheres, is gathered green and roasted as a vegetable, or, to use the more expressive West Indian negro phrase, as a bread-kind. Millions of human beings in Asia, Africa, America, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean live almost entirely on the mild and succulent but tasteless plantain. ”

“ Yet there are some curious varieties which may claim a corner where botanical curiosities are grown. The Plantain seems to have a peculiar tendency to run into abnormal forms, many of which will be found described and figured in Dr. Masters' "Vegetable Teratology," and among these forms are two which are exactly like a double green Rose, and have been cultivated as the Rose Plantain for many years. They were grown by Gerard, who speaks of "the beauty which is in the plant," and compared it to "a fine double Rose of a hoary or rusty greene colour." Parkinson also grew it and valued it highly. ”

“ This Fruit is so much esteemed by all Europeans that settle in America, that when they make a new Plantation they commonly begin with a good Plantain-walk, as they call it, or a field of Plantains; and as their Family encreaseth, so they augment the Plantain-walk, keeping one Man purposely to prune the Trees, and gather the Fruit as he sees convenient. For the Trees continue bearing, some or other, most part of the Year; and this is many times the whole Food on which a whole Family subsists. They thrive only in rich fat ground, for poor sandy will not bear them. ”

“ The plantain, or banana, is a pretty little tree, from fifteen to twenty feet high, with leaves like those of the palm, and a stem which is often eight inches in diameter, but is not of wood, but cane, and very easily broken. It belongs properly to the herbiferous species, and grows with uncommon rapidity. ”

“ Have not men of science named the plantain Musa Paradisaica, in allusion to the tradition, which has long obtained, that it was the plantain, and not the apple, that was the forbidden fruit in Eden?18 It was there to fill out the picture as an artist in the tropics would wish to see it painted. ”

“ The plantain, which may be said to be the bread of the common people, requires to be planted but once. The stem bears freely, like the banana of the same family, at the end of eight months, and then withering to the ground renews itself again from the roots. Sweet potatoes once planted require care only to prevent their too great luxuriance, and for this purpose a plough is passed through them before the wet season, and as many of the vines as can be freely plucked up are removed from the field. ”

“ The latter was, I doubt not, intended; and the former, adventive only with us, may also have occurred at any period after the settlement.
[249] “It is but one sort, and that is broad-leaved plantain” (Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 188) . Broad-leaved plantain (Gerard, p. 419) ,—Plantago major, L.; one of the most anciently and widely known of plants, and inhabiting, at present, all the great divisions of the earth. An account, similar to our author’s, of the name given to it by the American savages, is found in Kalm’s Travels. “Mr. Bartram had found this plant in many places on his travels ”

“ Plantain is very useful in making jewelry because you can use the stalk as well as the seed-pods.
Fig. 115 is a necklace made of the plantain-stalk cut in short pieces, all the same length, and the coral-red berries of the barberry-bush. The crooked branches of the barberry-bush grow very close together and are covered with thorns which stand out straight and sharp like pins. That is why it is so often used for hedges; nothing can get through it without being terribly scratched. From the branches the red berries hang down like coral drops. Fig. 116 shows the way they grow. ”

“ The name plantain is no more originally Indian than is banana. It, or rather platano, appears to have been the name under which the fruit was first carried to the W. Indies, according to Oviedo, in 1516; the first edition of his book was published in 1526. That author is careful to explain that the plant was improperly so called, as it was quite another thing from the platanus described by Pliny. Bluteau says the word is Spanish. ”

“ The remaining type is usually larger than the kinds sent to northern markets, is picked and used while still green and is always cooked before using, usually boiled as a vegetable. In this form it is known as the plantain, and is a good substitute for the potato in regions where the latter cannot be grown. Plantains are used on a large scale in all tropical countries, much more so than the yellow and red bananas which are familiar enough in northern markets. ”

“ Finlayson gives the following interesting information respecting the wild Plantain tree, found on the island of Pulo Ubi, off the southern extremity of Cambodia.
“We had,” he says, “the good fortune to find that splendid herbaceous plant in flower: unlike, however, to that luscious and most delicious fruit raised by the hand of man, the fruit of the wild Plantain contains scarce any pulp whatever. ”

“ In fact, when a blossom which has once depended upon insects for its fertilisation is driven by circumstances to depend upon the wind, it seems to derive a positive advantage from losing all those attractive features by which its ancestors formerly allured the eyes of bees or beetles.
Here, again, on the roadside is a bit of plantain. Everybody knows its flat rosette of green leaves and its tall spike of grass-like blossom, with long stamens hanging out to catch the breeze. Now plantain is a case exactly analogous to dog's mercury. It is an example of a degraded blossom. ”

“ Few of our Northerners appreciate the wonderful nutritive qualities of the plantain, which in this respect surpasses the banana; and it may be authoritatively stated that sixteen hundred and seven square feet of rich land will produce four thousand pounds of nutritive substance from plantains, which will support fifty persons, while the same land planted with wheat will support but two. ”

“ Therefore, it appears that in America the plantain has always been a seedless, cultivated plant, which can only have been introduced from Asia in preglacial times, through northern zones, for in that way alone was the immigration at all possible.—Ausland. ”

“ When transplanted, either in this way or for their ultimate position in the plantation, care should be taken to remove them with a good ball of earth, secured by the skin of the plantain, which prevents the ball of earth falling to pieces. ”

“ With the exception of the plantain, or banana as it is called in this country, the season for fruit was not. This exception, however, was sufficiently luscious to make the appetite grow by what it fed on. It is a fruit that nature has provided with a whole list of recommendations; it is obtainable all the year round, as the young shoots spring up of themselves from the rhizomes, causing the plantation to spread independently ”

“ To avoid complete shading their leafstalks are often many times the length of their more fortunately placed neighbors above them. In those plants like the garden primrose or common weedy plantain, which bear all their leaves in a close cluster or rosette at the level of the ground, we see an almost fiendish cleverness in their earlier and later habits of growth. ”

“ Ah, the beauty of these gardens of plantains, which fully realize one's idea of an Eden in the tropics! Nothing else grows beneath them,—nothing there but their great silken, banana-like leaves, hanging from the smooth stems, arching over you, and perhaps trailing on the ground. ”

“ Yet the bruised leaves still have some reputation as a styptic and healing plaster among country herbalists, and perhaps the alleged virtues are not altogether fanciful.
As a garden plant the Plantain can only be regarded as a weed and nuisance, especially on lawns, where it is very difficult to destroy them. ”

“ The soil best suited to the growth of the plantain is found in the virgin land most recently taken in from the forest, having a formation of clay and decomposed vegetable substances. A large portion of organic matter is required, as well as clay or other ponderous strata, to afford the greatest production of fruit. I have known good plantains produced in the West Indies, upon land considerably exhausted by the culture of cotton, but which was enriched by the application of a quantity of the decomposed seed of that shrub near the roots of the young plantains. ”

“ The many varieties of both the banana and plantain, which vary in taste, color, form and size, are very widely distributed throughout the world, being usually found in a zone bounded by 38 degrees North and 38 degrees South latitude. It is said that a single plant will produce, on the average, in one year three bunches of fruit weighing fifty or more pounds. The amount of labor required in its cultivation is very small, especially in the older plantations. ”

“ The top of the stalk boiled is a good vegetable; and the fibre of the leaves can be made into strong cloth. It has been calculated that the food-producing power of the plantain is 133 times greater than that of wheat. Its cultivation requires very little labour; it is generally propagated by suckers, which attain their full growth in about ten months after they are planted ”

“ Although from the extensive plantain walks in our colonies—which are seldom cultivated with a garden-like care—so large an average proportion may not be obtained as twenty times the production of wheat in Europe, yet I have had practical experience of the prodigious quantity of farinaceous matter obtainable from an acre of tolerably well-cultivated plantains, and no esculent plant requires less labor in its culture upon land suitable for its production. They are readily increased by suckers, which the old plants produce in abundance. ”

“ The plantain, the clothing, and meat would be carried away by the medicine-man, who would deposit the plantain-tree on waste land, but would take the meat and clothing for himself. Sometimes the medicine-man would kill the animal near the hut, lay a stout stick across the threshold, and narrow the doorway by partially filling it with branches of trees ”

“ Narrow-leaved Plantain. Plantago lanceolata L. Seeds shining, amber-colored to brown, oval, 2–2.5 mm. long, shaped like a shallow, thick-walled canoe with ends rounded alike, a dark scar occupying the [Pg 159] middle of the narrow concave side, a faint, transverse groove across the convex side near the middle sometimes apparent. Often found mixed with clover seeds from which it is very difficult to separate. Introduced from Europe.
Fig 174. Broad-leaved Plantain. Plantago major L.
Broad-leaved Plantain. ”