This, of course, is the effect of a gentle and balmy hurricane--a mere
capful of wind that tears and tatters them. After a really bad storm
(one of the sort when you tie ropes round your wooden house to prevent
its falling bodily to pieces, I mean) the bananas are all actually blown
down, and the crop for that season utterly destroyed. The apparent stem,
being merely composed of the overlapping and sheathing leaf-stalks, has
naturally very little stability; and the soft succulent trunk
accordingly gives way forthwith at the slightest onslaught. This
liability to be blown down in high winds forms the weak point of the
plantain, viewed as a food-stuff crop. In the South Sea Islands, where
there is little shelter, the poor Fijian, in cannibal days, often lost
his one means of subsistence from this cause, and was compelled to
satisfy the pangs of hunger on the plump persons of his immediate
relatives. But since the introduction of Christianity, and of a dwarf
stout wind-proof variety of banana, his condition in this respect, I am
glad to say, has been greatly ameliorated.
By descent the banana bush is a developed tropical lily, not at all
remotely allied to the common iris, only that its flowers and fruit are
clustered together on a hanging spike, instead of growing solitary and
separate as in the true irises. The blossoms, which, though pretty, are
comparatively inconspicuous for the size of the plant, show the
extraordinary persistence of the lily type; for almost all the vast
number of species, more or less directly descended from the primitive
lily, continue to the very end of the chapter to have six petals, six
stamens, and three rows of seeds in their fruits or capsules.
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