The
Fruit Is A Bunch Of Ten Or Twelve Plantains, Each A Span Long, And As
Thick As A Man's Wrist, Somewhat Crooked Or Bending Inwards.
These grow
on a leafy stalk on the middle of the plant, being at first green, but
grow yellow and tender as they ripen.
When the rind is stripped off, the
inner pulp is also yellowish and pleasant to the taste. Beneath the
fruit hangs down, from the same stalk, a leafy sharp-pointed tuft, which
seems to have been the flower. This fruit they call bannana, which
they have in reasonable abundance. They are ripe in September and
October. We carried some with us green to sea, which, were six weeks in
ripening. Guinea pepper grows wild in the woods on a small plant like
privet, having small slender leaves, the fruit being like our barberry
in form and colour. It is green at first, turning red as it ripens. It
does not grow in bunches like our barberry, but here and there two or
three together about the stalk. They call it bangue. The pene, of
which their bread is made, grows on a small tender herb resembling
grass, the stalk being all full of small seeds, not inclosed in any
bask. I think it is the same which the Turks call cuscus, and the
Portuguese yfunde.
The palmito tree is high and straight, its bark being knotty, and the
wood of a soft substance, having no boughs except at the top, and these
also seem rather reeds than boughs, being all pith within, inclosed by a
hard rind.
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