The Use of the Plantain.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 7 August 1914, Page 7

The Use of the Plantain.

The plantain is one of those articles of food which are at once cheap and very health-giving. Its cultivation is inexpensive, and swampy places are its natural home.

Its uses are many. No part of the tree is without its benefit in the economy of life. Its leaves serve the purpose of plates and dishes. The ripe fruit is eaten with relish. The flower, the stem, the green fruit are all constituents of the vegetable curry. Very fine cloth is manufactured from its fibre.

In Bengal there are about thirty varieties of plantain-trees, each one of which has a special use, physical, religious, or medicinal. Not much skill or science is required in planting the tree, and once it has taken root it dies pretty hard. As a manure for fields not very favorable for the growth of other plants and trees, the roots and withered leaves of the plantain ai-e almost unsurpassable. It will grow anywhere, and it has been calculated that a modest Hindu family can,jog on fairly well on the sale proceeds of the daily yield of a plantain-field covering quite a small area.