Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1884 — Bananas in Florida. [ARTICLE]

Bananas in Florida.

Hon. Robert B. Roosevelt, writing to the American Agriculturist in regard to a recent visit to Florida, says: “Opr posite Pilatka there were great plantations of bananas, which grow by suckers from the roots, and increase like weeds. They have to be three years old before they bear, and the development of the flower and fruit, which was going on while we were there, was a pretty sight. The top of the stalk turns over and produces a huge purple flower of a single leaf, as large as the hand of a giant. From under this large leaf starts a circle of small sprouts like fingers. The big leaf falls off, but from the ends of the fingers burst other, much smaller purple flowers. Then below the row of fingers grows another flower like the first; it also uncovers another row of fingers, and so on till the entire bunch of bananas, as we know it in the market, is formed. Even then the flower point does not cease growing, but exhibits flower after flower, which are merely ornamental and do not result in fruit. Sprouts start so freely from the roots, that the young bushes have to be cut away every year with scythes, or they would become crowded and the fruit degenerate.” Beware of the lean man. He cannot go through the eye of a cannibal.