Bananas – The Original Forbidden Fruit

1910

Curiosity of the Vegetable Kingdom So Considered by Many

The banana, which the late Sir Alfred Jones did so much to popularize in England, is believed by some people to be the original forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden.

In any case, it is one of the curiosities of the vegetable kingdom, being not a tree, a palm, a bush, a shrub, a vegetable or an herb, but a herbaceous plant with the status of a tree. Although it sometimes attains a height of 30 feet, there is no woody fiber in any part of its structure, and the bunches growing, on the dwarf banana plant are often heavier than the stalk which supports them.

No plant gives such a quantity of food to the acre as the banana; it wields 44 times more by weight than the potato and 133 times more than wheat. Moreover, no insect will attack it, and it is always immune from disease of any kind. Altogether, it is a highly favored plant, and likely to become even more popular in this country than it is at the present time.