PDF - Wallace Online

254 TROPICAL NATUREand handsome flowers. The bananas and plantains are wellknown as among the most luxuriant and beautiful productionsof the tropics. Many species occur wild in the forests all;have majestic foliage and handsome flowers, while some produceedible fruit. Of the ginger-worts (Zingiberaceae andMarantacese), the well-known cannas of our sub -tropicalgardens may be taken as representatives, but the equatorialspecies are very numerous and varied, often forming densethickets in damp places, and adorning the forest shades withtheir elegant and curious or showy flowers. The maranthsproduce "arrowroot," while the ginger -worts are highlyaromatic, producing ginger, cardamums, grains of paradise,turmeric, and several medicinal drugs. The Musaceae producethe most valuable of tropical fruits and foods. Thebanana is the variety which is always eaten as a fruit, havinga delicate aromatic flavour ;the plantain is a larger variety,which is best cooked. Eoasted in the green state it is anexcellent vegetable, resembling roasted chestnuts ;when ripeit is sometimes pulped and boiled with water, making a veryagreeable sweet soup or it is ; roasted, or cut into slices andfried, in either form being a delicious tropical substitute forfruit pudding. These plants are annuals, producing one immensebunch of fruit. This bunch is sometimes four or five feetlong, containing near two hundred plantains, and often weighsabout a hundredweight. They grow very close together, andHumboldt calculated that an acre of plantains would supplymore food than could be obtained from the same extent ofground by any other known plant. Well mayit be said thatthe plantain is the glory of the tropics, and well was thespecies named by Linnaeus Musa paradisiaca!Another very characteristic and remarkable group oftropical plants are the epiphytal and climbing arums.These are known by their large, arrow-shaped, dark greenand glossy leaves, often curiously lobed or incised, andsometimes reticulated with large open spaces, as if pieces hadbeen regularly eaten out of them by some voracious insects.Sometimes they form clusters of foliage on living or deadtrees, to which they cling by their aerial roots. Others climb