Читать книгу The Circle of Knowledge: A Classified, Simplified, Visualized Book of Answers - Various - Страница 182

The trees previously mentioned are woody plants with only one stem, which begin to form branches at some distance from the ground. The shrubs, on the contrary, are woody plants in which the stem forms branches close to the ground, or even underground.

Banana (Musa sapientium), a handsome plant, long cultivated in tropical and sub-tropical countries for its fruit. The sheathing bases of the large, oblong leaves form a false stem twenty to thirty feet high. The spikes of irregular flowers are succeeded by a branch of one hundred to two hundred fruits, weighing together from fifty to eighty pounds. The long, berry-like fruits, as they ripen, convert nearly all their starch into sugar and pectose, and form a valuable [143] article of food, the staple food in many tropical countries, producing forty-four times the weight of food per acre yielded by the potato. It is produced in enormous quantities in the West Indies and Brazil, and shipped in constantly increasing volume to the United States and Europe. Beginning with a few hundred bunches in 1870, consumption in the United States has increased to upwards of five million dollars worth annually. Banana flour is becoming a staple article of food.

Its cultivation antedates historical records in India. Pliny mentions that the Greeks under Alexander the Great saw it in India.

The banana plant is the most wonderfully productive fruit in the world. It is a native of Asia, but most of our bananas come from the New World. Here the plant is full grown and the bananas ripe. From the time the suckers are planted to the gathering of the fruit is less than a year, so rapidly does the plant come to maturity.

Blueberry. See Huckleberry.

Cassava (Manihot utilissima), the bitter cassava, and M. Aipi, the sweet cassava, are both natives of tropical America. Both are shrubby plants, the former with yellow poisonous roots and seven-lobed leaves, the latter with reddish wholesome roots and five-lobed leaves. The coarsely-grated roots are baked into cassava cakes, from which the intoxicating drink piwarrie is prepared. The juice of the poisonous kind is rendered harmless by boiling, and is then the delicious sauce known as cassareep. If allowed to settle, it deposits a large quantity of starch, known as Brazilian arrowroot when simply sun-dried, or as tapioca when partly converted into dextrine by roasting on hot plates. It was long cultivated in Brazil, and, after Spanish discovery, extended to Africa and Asia.

Cranberry (Oxycoccus), a small evergreen shrub, that grows in bogs and marshy grounds, and is a small wiry shrub with creeping, thread-like branches, and small oval leaves rolled back at the edges. The berries are an excellent antiscorbutic, and hence furnish an excellent addition to sea stores. The American cranberry (O. macrocarpa) is larger and more upright with bigger leaves and berries. Large quantities are exported to Europe and other varieties are also imported into Britain and Germany from Russia and other parts of northern Europe.

Currant (Ribes rubrum), is an important shrub, bearing red, black and white fruit. Its branches are not prickly; its leaves have three to five lobes, greenish-yellow blossoms and the berries [144] hang in clusters like grapes. It is often planted in gardens for the sake of its fruit, but is also found in a wild state. Black currants are extensively grown in Continental Europe, Scotland and Canada; sparingly in the United States. In France the liqueur de cassis is made from the fruit. Red currants are very widely grown in Europe and the United States, chiefly for jellies. New York and Michigan lead in production.