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Plantain   Listen
noun
Plantain  n.  
1.
(Bot.) A treelike perennial herb (Musa paradisiaca) of tropical regions, bearing immense leaves and large clusters of the fruits called plantains. See Musa.
2.
The fruit of this plant. It is long and somewhat cylindrical, slightly curved, and, when ripe, soft, fleshy, and covered with a thick but tender yellowish skin. The plantain is a staple article of food in most tropical countries, especially when cooked.
Plantain cutter, or Plantain eater (Zool.), any one of several large African birds of the genus Musophaga, or family Musophagidae, especially Musophaga violacea. See Turaco. They are allied to the cuckoos.
Plantain squirrel (Zool.), a Java squirrel (Sciurus plantani) which feeds upon plantains.
Plantain tree (Bot.), the treelike herb Musa paradisiaca. See def. 1 (above).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Plantain" Quotes from Famous Books



... Some broad-leafed plantain plants were also seen in the neighbourhood of the villages, which as we advanced became very numerous. The villages of the Wakimbu are like those of the Wagogo, square, flat-roofed, enclosing an open area, which is sometimes divided into three ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first? It has been so written for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them. ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... my gardens and fields. The manner in which they eat the roots of the plantain in my grass-walks is very curious; with their upper mandible, which is much longer than their lower, they bore under the plant, and so eat the root off upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves untouched. In this respect they are serviceable, as they destroy a very troublesome weed; but ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... again, In my katamaran A-keel would I push To your palmy door! Again would I hear The heave and hush Of your song by the plantain-tree. But far away Do I toil and crush The hopes that arise At my sick heart's core. For never near Does it come, the day That draws ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice

... him appeared. Ben was inconsolable, and sternly said it served Bab right when the dog-wood poison affected both face and hands. Poor Bab thought so, too, and dared ask no sympathy from him, though Thorny eagerly prescribed plantain leaves, and Betty kept her supplied with an endless succession of them steeped in cream and pitying tears. This treatment was so successful that the patient soon took her place in society as well as ever, but for Ben's affliction there was no ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... gem of the ocean. Around the coral reefs the waves lashed themselves into fury, and the white surf flew upward; but one little opening admitted the water gently into a quiet bay, where the deep blue rivalled that of the sky, and the water-birds swam in peace. The cocoa-nut, the plantain, and the banana spread their broad leaves to the sun, and flowers of brilliant hues and exquisite fragrance enlivened the landscape. Behind, there uprose tall cliffs covered with the richest foliage, and cascades, like silver ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... the customary daily thunderstorm descended. So they halted under a spreading plantain tree, whose leaves, broader even than banana leaves, really were very good umbrellas. Here they ate their ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... little Peter was feeding his pet rabbits with plantain just outside the doors of the town-meeting that afternoon of June 19th. As the dignified men adjourned from the gathering, they still discussed the measures adopted for the erection of the fort. Peter's sharp ears overheard the mystic ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster

... two doubtless would starve in the midst of plenty, should they by some miracle escape the other forces of destruction which constantly threatened them. That morning Tarzan had brought them fruit, nuts, and plantain, and now he was bringing them the flesh of his kill, while the best that they might do was to fetch water from the river. Even now, as they walked across the clearing toward the boma, they were in utter ignorance of the presence of Tarzan near them. They did not know that his sharp ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... matter in or on the human body. The Negro Casta, who discovered this herb, afterwards, as a remedy against the deadly bite of the rattlesnake, received a considerable reward from the Assembly of South Carolina. It is a native of most parts of Europe and Asia, as also of Japan. Plantain stands in the forefront of all ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope

... yard, garden. patron (naut.), cockswain of a boat. peon, day-laborer. peso, dollar. peso oro, a dollar in gold. peso y medio, a dollar and a half. petate, straw mat on which the poor people sleep. plaga, plague, pestilence. platano, plantain tree, or its fruit. playa, shore, beach, strand. policia, police. por, for, by. por dios, by God! por el amor del cielo, for the love of heaven! por supuesto, of course. posada, inn, hotel, restaurant. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... poison would be less severe. He then put his lips to the wound, sucked it, and, taking her in his arms, carried her to the house. Before he reached it, her foot had swollen and burst. They applied an Indian remedy, a peculiar kind of plantain, which relieved her, but she was years before she perfectly recovered from the effects of the poison. Two children that were born during that time turned spotted, became sore and died; but her third ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... this place, he was surprised to find it to consist of nearly five hundred villages, almost joining each other, occupying a vast and beautiful plain, adorned with the finest trees. Amongst these, the plantain, the palm, and the cocoa-nut tree, were seen flourishing in great abundance, and the aspect of the country strikingly resembled some parts of Yariba. A considerable traffic is carried on here in slaves and bullocks, which are alike exposed in the daily market. The bullocks ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... cream, and strained before it is put away to cool, makes a very cooling, soothing ointment. Plantain leaves laid upon a ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... finished. Periwinkle is very much grown, and is expected to shut up her baby house and throw away her doll in a month or two more. Sweet Fern has learned to read and write, and has put on a jacket and pair of pantaloons—all of which improvements I am sorry for. Squash Blossom, Blue Eye, Plantain, and Buttercup have had the scarlet fever, but came easily through it. Huckleberry, Milkweed, and Dandelion were attacked with the whooping cough, but bore it bravely, and kept out of doors whenever the sun shone. Cowslip, during the autumn, had either the measles, ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of this, although it was too small almost to have "banks," properly speaking, Mrs Gilmour pointed out to Nell the "great water plantain," with its sprigs of little lilac blossoms and beautiful green leaves, like those of the lily of the valley somewhat. The plant is said to be used in Russia as a cure for hydrophobia, the good lady explained; though she ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... plays a soft air, the curtain rises slowly, and discovers an Indian Boy and Girl sleeping under two plantain-trees; and, when the curtain is almost up, the music turns into a tune expressing an alarm, at which the Boy ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... cloth is worn by nine-tenths of the inhabitants who are civilized enough to wear clothes at all. The demand for this cloth is large and will grow from year to year, and of all coarse cotton cloth in the market the American is preferred. The plantain is the native substitute for bread, but wheat flour is used by the mercantile and official classes; there is a steady demand for Baltimore and Richmond flour, which brands are supposed, probably with reason, to stand the climate better than flour manufactured elsewhere. ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle

... the pigweed, which lives only one year, is called an annual and is one of the easiest weeds to destroy. Mustard, plantain, chess, dodder, cockle, crab grass, and Jimson weed are a few of our most ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... whitish:—Rue-anemone, hepatica, spring beauty, blood-root, toothwort, Dutchman's breeches, dog's tooth violet, wild ginger, chickweed, Isopyrum, plantain-leaved everlasting, shepherd's purse, shad-bush, wild strawberry, whitlow-grass, wind-flower, hackberry (greenish white), false Solomon's seal, catnip, spring cress, wild black ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... the throngs who pay their vows In courts that hands have made, And hears the worshipper who bows Beneath the plantain shade. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... of castor-oil plant in this country—one with a purple stem and bright red veins in the leaves, that is remarkably handsome. Also a wild plantain, with a crimson stem to the leaf; this does not grow to the height of the common plantain, but is simply a plume of leaves springing from the ground without a ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... very common, is found in the Magnolia, the Holly, and the radical leaves of the common Plantain and Tobacco. The thread makes three turns of the stem before reaching the eighth leaf which stands over the first. This is the 3/8 arrangement. It is well seen in the Marguerite, a greenhouse plant which is very easily grown in ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell

... class of birds, a great number of new or rare species, and among those remarkable either for size or beauty, are the golden vulture, the great American eagle, the Impey peacock, the Ju[] pheasant or argus, the plantain-eater, &c. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... tomatoes were bold with flaunting blossoms. A bashful cucumber which basked unobtrusively in the wetness of the ice-box outlet under the shed at Artie Van Arlen's home was growing apace. But not a sign was there of Tom's beans or peas or beets—nothing in his little allotted patch but a lonely plantain which he had carefully nursed until Pee-wee had told him the bitter truth—that this child of his heart was nothing but a ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... "jarnders." Elder, rue, and saffron were English herbs that were made settlers here and carefully cultivated; so also were sage, hyssop, tansy, wormwood, celandine, comfrey, mallows, mayweed, yarrow, chamomile, dandelion, shepherd's-purse, bloody dock, elecampane, motherwort, burdock, plantain, catnip, mint, fennel, and dill—all now flaunting weeds. Dunton wrote, with praise of a Dr. Bullivant, in Boston, in 1686, "He does not direct his patients to the East Indies to look for drugs when they may have far better ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma. The faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him. Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them i'the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled with his god, he thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of souls, engulfer. Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing creecries, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... furniture, the owners passing their time swinging in dirty hammocks, and occasionally taking down a canoe-load of plantains to Greytown for sale. It is one of the rarest sights to see any of these squatters at work. Their plantain patch and occasionally some fish from the river suffice to keep them alive ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... I ask for more than this, for a place in her affections. Madame de Thianges and Madame de Nevers are aware of my respect and attachment for them, and they approve of this, for they have engraved their names and crests on my plantain-trees at Maintenon. Such inscriptions are a bond to bind us, and if no mischance befall, these trees, as I hope, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... roundly At any astounding yarn, By darning their dear eyes roundly ('T was all they had to darn). They "hoisted their slacks," adjusting Garments of plantain-leaves With nautical twitches (as if they wore breeches, Instead ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... answered thoughtfully. 'I too am not without sin. They call me a doctor.... Me a doctor, indeed! And who can heal the sick? That is all a gift from God. But there are ... yes, there are herbs, and there are flowers; they are of use, of a certainty. There is plantain, for instance, a herb good for man; there is bud-marigold too; it is not sinful to speak of them: they are holy herbs of God. Then there are others not so; and they may be of use, but it's a sin; and to speak ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... in the village, Skag inquired about the white man. The native was serving him a curry with drift-white rice on plantain leaves. After that there was a sweetmeat made of curds of cream and honey, with the flavour and perfume of some altogether delectable flower. In good time the native replied that the white man's name was Cadman: that he was an American traveller and writer and artist, ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... Monday, Herr Rudolph Schwankmacher, one of the most respected residents of Apia, capital of Samoa, was reclining under the shade of a plantain in his garden beyond the promontory of Mulinuu, enjoying the conversation of a friend and the refreshing bitterness of a bottle of light lager beer. The garden rose a few feet above the level of the ground in front of it, and afforded an excellent view over the sea. Hither Herr Schwankmacher ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... side of the hill round which the Rhone sweeps in its main angle, opposite Martigny, and looking carefully across the valley to the ridge of the hill which rises above Martigny itself, then distant about four miles, a plantain seed-vessel about an inch long, and a withered head of a scabious half an inch broad, happened to be seen rising up, out of the grass near me, across the outline of the distant hill, so as seemingly to set themselves closely beside the large pines and chestnuts which fringed that distant ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... Their minarets and pinnacles are gleaming like lightning, and banners and pennons of many colours are fluttering. The warm fragrance of perfumes was issuing from windows, air-holes, and lattices. At every door were placed pillars of the plantain-tree, with fresh shoots, and golden vessels. Garlands and wreathed flowers were festooned from house to house, and joyful music was sounding. From place to place, the recital of the Puranas and discourse about Krishna ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... the gate he met the girl with the long earrings on the well-trodden path that lay across the pasture ground, overgrown with dock and plantain leaves. She had a long, brightly-coloured apron on, and was quickly swinging her left arm in front of herself as she stepped briskly with her fat, bare feet. With her right arm she was pressing a fowl to her stomach. The fowl, with red comb shaking, seemed perfectly calm; he only rolled up his ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... in their food as much as we do. In summer there are many weeds which are a great treat to them. Dandelion, plantain, clover, grass and hay, with an occasional sprig of parsley, will give them much pleasure. In winter they may have carrots, turnips, and parsnips with barley meal and some oats. Too much green food is likely to make ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... time of it, though, when I had to go round for a week with plantain leaves and cream stuck all over my face! Just picked some pretty red dogwood, Ben; and then I was a regular guy, with a face like a lobster, and my eyes swelled out of sight. Come along, and learn right away, and never get into scrapes like ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... of cocoa-nut trees, with a fence or railing before them, within which the ground was well cleared and trodden, which gave their little habitations a very neat and cleanly appearance: I examined whilst we lay there several neat and well fenced inclosures, in which were the plantain, banana, yam, sugar cane, and several other articles, which they seem to take ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... these are in great perfection. The peach is every where wild, and is also reared in gardens: but it does not ripen till long after the rainy season has commenced, and is generally half rotten before it becomes soft. At Kathmandu the Plantain tree (Musa) dies to the ground in winter, but the roots are not killed, and in the spring send up fresh stems. Some good plantains come from Nayakot, and other valleys, that are situated ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... Hope to the Peloponnesus; the Cacalia Kleinia, the Dracaena, and other plants, which in their naked and tortuous trunks, in their succulent leaves, and their tint of bluish green, exhibit distinctive marks of the vegetation of Africa. It is in this zone that the date-tree, the plantain, the sugar-cane, the Indian fig, the Arum Colocasia, the root of which furnishes a nutritive fecula, the olive-tree, the fruit trees of Europe, the vine, and corn are cultivated. Corn is reaped from the end of March to the beginning of May: and the culture of the bread-fruit tree of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... are greater now than they were then. They have more meaning. Now are they part of some great order. They are not separate. Without moving my feet, I lay my hands on apples, Virginia creeper, asparagus, marigold, sweet sultan, oxalis, plantain, crab-grass, white clover, all growing securely in one place, and everyone like unto itself alone. Here is the everlasting miracle before my eyes, and all miracles are mysteries. Once I thought I should understand such things when I was "grown up," but I find ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... question (that hath been asked by Draupadi). Say, whether thou regardest Krishna as unwon.' And having spoken thus unto the son of Kunti, Duryodhana desirous of encouraging the son of Radha and insulting Bhima, quickly uncovered his left thigh that was like unto the stem of a plantain tree or the trunk of an elephant and which was graced with every auspicious sign and endued with the strength of thunder, and showed it to Draupadi in her very sight. And beholding this, Bhimasena expanding his red eyes, said unto Duryodhana in the midst of all those kings ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... all gone," mumbled the Monkey, and pelted him with the plantain-peel and balls of paper made out of the packets where the sugar had been. "Why did you stay so long? I got hungry, and could ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... though chiefly frugivorous, are to some extent insectivorous also, as attested by their teeth[1], as well as by their habits. They feed, amongst other things, on the guava, the plantain, the rose-apple, and the fruit of the various fig-trees. Flying foxes are abundant in all the maritime districts, especially at the season when the pulum-imbul[2], one of the silk-cotton trees, is putting ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... drive into the coolie village, along a narrower way, lined with plantain-trees, bananas, flamboyants, and unfamiliar shrubs with large broad leaves. Here and there are cocoa-palms. Beyond the little ditches on either side, occupying openings in the natural hedge, are the dwellings—wooden cabins, widely separated from each other. The narrow lanes that enter the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... flowers. It was King Julius's palace. The front of it was all one piazza, maybe two-hundred feet long and forty deep, with slim bamboo pillars; and men seemed to be still shingling one end of it with layers of plantain leaves. But the king was out in a sort of square to one side, and had about fifty warriors with feathers in their hair, practising spears at a mark. Then he saw us, and then he said something sharp, and the fifty fell into line behind, with spears and shields in disciplined order. ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... proprietors, rajahs, baboos, and so on, who hold vast tracts of land, either by grant, or purchase, or hereditary succession; but the tenants are literally the children of the soil. Wherever a village nestles among its plantain or mango groves, the land is parcelled out among the villagers. A large proprietor does not reckon up his farms as a landlord at home would do, but he counts his villages. In a village with a thousand acres belonging to it, there might be 100 or ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... besieged by men, women, and children, offering bouquets for sale—two or three of which were thrust in at every carriage window—and baskets of strawberries, cherimoyas, nisperos, melons, oranges, sugar-cane, plantain, bananas, asparagus, green peas, French beans, eggs, chickens, and even fish—nice little pejereyes, fresh from the stream close by. It must evidently be the custom of the Chilenos to visit by rail these ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... skull or two, broken pots and pieces of rag fluttering in the wind, all offered as propitiation to the presiding demon of the place, while away in the bush, behind the houses, we saw the giant leaves of the plantain groves that yielded the staple ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... section for remarks on certain articles used at our fashionable modern tables, of which I could not well find it convenient to speak elsewhere. And first, of SALADS, and HERBS used in cooking; such as asparagus, artichokes, spinage, plantain, cabbage, dock, lettuce, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... wrestling. They also practised archery and spear-throwing. They shot, not at a mark, but to try how far they could send an arrow; their spears, however, they threw at a mark, generally the bole of a plantain, at the distance of twenty yards. These spears were about nine feet long. They also, in war, used clubs of hard wood, often well carved, and six or seven feet long; pikes, headed with the stings of sting-rays; ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... the corymbose heads of the yarrow, the spikes of the self-heal, the crosiers of the golden-rod, the panicles of the asters, the racemes of the Indian tobacco, the knotted threads of the blue vervain and the plantain, the miniature mandarin temples of the peppergrass—all these have shed, or are shedding, myriads of seeds to be silently sepulchred under the snow until earth's easter April mornings. The withered berries of the bittersweet, the cat-brier, ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... perhaps a couple of dozen sheep grazed on the opposite side of the valley; cocoa-nuts reared their tall slender stems and waved their feathery branches by hundreds, and behind them again as the ground sloped gently upward it became more and more densely covered with palm, banana, and plantain groves thickly interspersed with various trees, some of considerable size and dense foliage, among which brilliant orchids and gaudy parasites of the gayest hues entwined themselves to the ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... (cypress) her lover in her arms for the last time, and (pine) away. But happily her parent did not constitute (ebony) skeleton at their feast. He was guilty of no tyranny to reduce their hopes to (ashes). They found him in his garden busily (plantain). He was chewing (gum). "Well," he said thoughtfully, in answer to the question: "Since (yew) love her I must (cedar) to (yew). You make a fine young (pear). Don't cut any (capers) after you're married, young man! Don't (pine) and complain if ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... substantial. They felt no particular anxiety upon this score, as George knew that wild fruits of several kinds were tolerably plentiful on the island, and about half an hour after they had started they were fortunate enough to fall in with a wild plantain, the fruit of which was just in the right condition for eating. No time was lost in securing a goodly bunch of this very nutritious fruit, upon which they feasted, as they went along, until ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... the bamboo drapes a feathery fringe by every stream, the cocoa trees grow right up to the road or railroad which sweeps along as on an avenue between them, while at every crossing the white roadway is lined by the majestic sentinels of plantain, coco-nut palm ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... plants cultivated by man, the sugar-cane, the plantain (musa), the mammee-apple (mammea), and alligator-pear-tree (laurus persea) alone have the property of the cocoa-nut-tree, that of being watered alike with fresh and salt water. This circumstance is favorable to their migrations; and if the ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various

... place of protection in the event of a recurrence of bad weather, and we were not likely to find it by standing still. Also we were looking for food, with a view to the future; but the question of supplies afforded us little anxiety, for banana and plantain trees were abundant in that valley, to say nothing of grapes and several other kinds of fruit. Coming to a banana tree, the fruit of which was fully ripe, we made a good meal, and then, feeling rather tired, we trampled down ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... crowd around his barns and dwellings, and throng his garden and jostle and override each other in their strife to be near him! Some of them are so domestic and familiar, and so harmless withal, that one comes to regard them with positive affection. Motherwort, catnip, plantain, tansy, wild mustard,—what a homely human look they have! they are an integral part of every old homestead. Your smart new place will wait long before they draw near it. Our knot-grass, that carpets every old dooryard, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... The taro, which is carefully cultivated, averages two or three feet high, and has fine large leaves and tubers like those of the potato, but not so good when roasted. There is much gracefulness in the appearance of the plantain, or banana, which varies from twelve to fifteen feet in height, and has leaves like those of the palm, but a brittle reed-like stem, about eight inches in diameter. It attains its full growth in the first year, bears fruit in the second, and then dies. Thus its life ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... on the banks, half brown, Half green with shoots that struggle to the birth, Nibbling where early plantain-buds hang down, Scenting the sweet, sweet smell of forest earth, The deer will trace thy misty track that ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... they? They are aquatic plants. Algae are not to be confounded with the water vegetation common to the eye and passing by the term weeds. Such plants include eelgrass, pickerel weed, water plantain, and "duckmeat"—all of which have roots and produce flowers. This vegetation does not lend a bad odor or taste to the water. In itself it is harmless, although it sometimes affords a refuge for organisms ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... Government for the old Dutch naturalists who surveyed and explored the mountain. There are a lot of strawberries planted there, which do very well, but there were not many ripe. The common weeds and plants of the top were very like English ones, such as buttercups, sow-thistle, plantain, wormwood, chickweed, charlock, St. John's wort, violets and many others, all closely allied to our common plants of those names, but of distinct species. There was also a honey-suckle, and a tall and very pretty kind of cowslip. None of these are ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... people of Ceylon, to the following effect: A gentleman once had in his employment twenty-five idiots. In the old times it was customary with Sinhalese high families not to allow their servants to eat from plates, but every day they were supplied with plantain leaves, from which they took their food. After eating, they were accustomed to shape the leaf into the form of a cup and drink out of it. Now in this gentleman's house the duty of providing the leaves devolved upon the twenty-five idiots, who were scarcely fit for any other work. ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston

... showery torrents wash in vain; Its starving orchard where the thistle blows, And mossy trunks still mark the broken rows; Its chimney-loving poplar, oftenest seen Next an old roof, or where a roof has been; Its knot-grass, plantain,—all the social weeds, Man's mute companions following where he leads; Its dwarfed pale flowers, that show their straggling heads, Sown by the wind from grass-choked garden-beds; Its woodbine creeping where it used to climb; Its roses breathing of the olden time; All ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... came to the place where we intended to lodge, the Cimaroons, presently laying down their burdens, fell to cutting of forks or posts, and poles or rafters, and palmito boughs, or plantain leaves; and with great speed set up the number of six houses. For every of which, they first fastened deep into the ground, three or four great posts with forks: upon them, they laid one transom, which was commonly about twenty feet, and made the sides, in the manner of the roofs of our country ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols

... Celebrating T'ae-Sze's Freedom from Jealousy The Fruitfulness of the Locust Lamenting the Absence of a Cherished Friend Celebrating the Goodness of the Descendants of King Wan The Virtuous Manners of the Young Women Praise of a Rabbit-Catcher The Song of the Plantain-Gatherers The Affection of ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... destroy prudence. "Prudence," says Mr. Edwards, "is a term that has no place in the negro vocabulary; instead of trusting to what are called the ground provisions, which are safe from the hurricanes, the negroes, in the cultivation of their own lands, trust more to plantain-groves, corn, and other vegetables that are liable to be destroyed by storms. When they earn a little money, they immediately gratify their palate with salted meats and other provisions, which are to them delicacies. The idea of accumulating, and of being ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... pours along the plain, And Indus rolls to swell the Eastern Main, What awful scenes the curious mind delight! What wonders burst upon the dazzled sight! There giant palms lift high their tufted heads, The plantain wide his graceful foliage spreads; Wild in the woods the active monkey springs, The chattering parrot claps her painted wings; 'Mid tall bamboos lies hid the deadly snake, The tiger crouches in the tangled brake; The spotted axis bounds ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... Cavendish variety, are planted at from 12 to 16 feet apart each way, but large-growing bananas, such as the Sugar and Lady's Finger, require from 20 to 25 feet apart each way, as do the stronger-growing varieties of plantain. Plantains are not grown to any extent in Queensland, and our principal varieties are those already mentioned, the Cavendish variety greatly predominating. In the North, the cultivation of this latter variety is carried out on an extensive ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson

... by the other scouts were many orchids,—fringed-purple, ragged-fringed, yellow-fringed, and others. Also the Indian pink, the rattlesnake plantain, the pink snake-mouth, monkshood, bloodroot, pitcher plant, and numerous others that formed a wonderful exhibit which it would take a long time ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... from the mouth of the Delhi Gate nearly ends my resolution of entering the City of Dreadful Night at this hour. It is a compound of all evil savours, animal and vegetable, that a walled city can brew in a day and a night. The temperature within the motionless groves of plantain and orange-trees outside the city walls seems chilly by comparison. Heaven help all sick persons and young children within the city to-night! The high house-walls are still radiating heat savagely, and from obscure side gullies ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... scarifying or sucking the parts. Nitrate of silver may then be used and the ligatures removed. Alcohol, in any form, is an antidote to snake poison. For the stings of insects, apply aqua ammonia, fresh earth, raw onion, plantain, or ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... cotton garment of a Tahitian maid next fascinated him; he beheld the primitive life of nature, the real modesty of naked chastity, the joys of an idleness natural to mankind, a peaceful fate by a slow river of sweet water under a plantain tree that bears its pleasant manna without the toil of man. Then all at once he became a corsair, investing himself with the terrible poetry that Lara has given to the part: the thought came at the sight of the mother-of-pearl tints of a myriad sea-shells, and grew ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... there some ravines seemed under tillage; the surface, dotted with peaks of medium height, grew flat as it approached the lake; barley-fields took the place of rice-plantations, and there, too, could be seen growing the species of plantain from which the wine of the country is drawn, and mwani, the wild plant which supplies a substitute for coffee. A collection of some fifty or more circular huts, covered with a flowering thatch, constituted the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... hungry to proceed farther without breakfasting; and a tolerably open space between the trees affording us room to light a fire, we landed, and having cleared the ground, soon had our pots boiling. Our crew put all their food, consisting of rice, plantain, and salt beef, into one large pot, and boiled them together. The mess was then emptied out into wooden basins, from which they fed themselves with their fingers, long cakes ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... Terrace," protested the whole party, "copied, in every point, the Huang Hua Lou. But what's essential is a faultless imitation. Now were we to begin to criticise minutely the couplet just cited, we would indeed find it to be, as compared with the line 'A book when it is made of plantain leaves,' still more ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... to the hut, my shipmates were yet asleep, and we did not awake them until supper was prepared, which was much the same with our breakfast, except the addition of plantain. After supper we all set around the table devising means to get to Matanzas. Through Manuel, Capt. Hilton offered the master fisherman our long-boat and forty dollars in cash, on our arrival at Matanzas, which was accepted, and we were to sail ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins

... Leaves and Cream for.—"Make ointment from plantain laves, simmered in sweet cream or fresh butter. This is ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... pace; He hadde pricked like as he were wood.* *mad A clote-leaf* he had laid under his hood, * burdock-leaf For sweat, and for to keep his head from heat. But it was joye for to see him sweat; His forehead dropped as a stillatory* *still Were full of plantain or of paritory.* *wallflower And when that he was come, he gan to cry, "God save," quoth he, "this jolly company. Fast have I pricked," quoth he, "for your sake, Because that I would you overtake, To riden in this merry company." His Yeoman was eke full of courtesy, And saide, "Sirs, now in ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... had a peep of the Lohit beyond Brahma Koond. Wallichia continues, as well as Bambusa, Saccharum Megala. The kheties are either of rice or Cynosurus or Zea. Tobacco is not cultivated, but left to take care of itself. Buddleia Neemda and wild plantain continue, the latter is probably a distinct species; leaves subtis glauco niveis. Pandanus continues. The name of the Red mountain before alluded to, is Thu-ma- thaya, the rivulet at its base is Tus-soo-muchee. Tus-soo Dee-ling is the name of the ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... were admirable, no less so were its forms; for there were palms of many different kinds, including the coconut palm in thousands, close down to the water's edge. The traveller tree, shaped like a fan made of organ pipes; the banana and plantain, loaded with great bunches of fruit, each bunch a fair load for a man; there were great clumps of feathery bamboo; there were big trees covered with scarlet flowers instead of leaves; there was the flaming bougainvillea in profusion; and, in addition, there were ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... canoe. The Guayas is a sluggish stream, its turbid waters starting from the slope of the Andes, and flowing through a low, level tract, covered with varied forms of vegetable life. Forests of the broad-leaved plantain and banana line the banks. The fruit is the most common article of food in equatorial America, and is eaten raw, roasted, baked, boiled, and fried. It grows on a succulent stem formed of sheath-like leaf-stalks rolled over ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... from the time the dykes were built, and the house erected. But these physiological facts, however well authenticated they may have been, are no more conclusive of the presence of dormant seed, than the appearance of the common plantain about a recently built dwelling-house, where none ever grew before, is proof that the seeds of this common household plant had lain dormant for ages before the house was erected. We cannot tell why this common plant ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... contemporaries of the mammoth and the rhinoceros came originally from the polar regions, where the remains of a luxuriant vegetation prove that climatic conditions prevailed in remote times of a very different character to those of the present day. The lignites of Iceland are made up of tulip, plantain, and nut-trees, even the vine sometimes occurring. In the ferruginous sandstones, associated with the carboniferous deposits of Spitzberg, the beech, the poplar, the magnolia, the plum tree, the sequoia, and numerous coniferous trees can be made out. The sturdy sailors who dare ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... Mughal painting, its chief concern was with the varied phases of romance. Ladies would be shown brooding in their chambers as storm clouds mounted in the sky. A girl might be portrayed desperately fondling a plantain tree, gripping a pet falcon, the symbol of her lover, or hurrying through the rainy darkness intent only on reaching a longed-for tryst. A prince would appear lying on a terrace, his outstretched arms ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... hermitage was surrounded by a massive-pillared courtyard. Outer walls were moss-covered; pigeons fluttered over the flat gray roof, unceremoniously sharing the ashram quarters. A rear garden was pleasant with jackfruit, mango, and plantain trees. Balustraded balconies of upper rooms in the two-storied building faced the courtyard from three sides. A spacious ground-floor hall, with high ceiling supported by colonnades, was used, Master said, chiefly during the annual festivities of DURGAPUJA. {FN12-1} A ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... Life or Spirit permeates the universe, the poetical intuition of man never fails to find it, and to delight in everything typical of that Spirit. "The leaves of the plantain," says a Zen poet, "unfold themselves, hearing the voice of thunder. The flowers of the hollyhock turn towards the sun, looking at it all day long." Jesus could see in the lily the Unseen Being who clothed it so lovely. Wordsworth found the most profound thing in all the world to ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... upper from the lower garden, hid from those immediately behind it all view of the estuary. Here, still sheltered by the hedge, he stopped and Audrey stopped, and Aguilar absently plucked up a young plantain from the turf and ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... his reverence an opportunity of arranging his clothes, the good woman proceeded to the garden and filled her basket with plantain for his breakfast. Much as the general stood in need of shoes, he sat himself down for a most fortunate gentleman in being able to procure even such raiment; for, said he, what a figure I would cut entering Jolliffee on a mule, and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... mentioned the henbane, which is known in Germany as the "devil's eye," a name applied to the stich-wort in Wales. A species of ground moss is also styled in Germany the "devil's claws;" one of the orchid tribe is "Satan's hand;" the lady's fingers is "devil's claws," and the plantain is "devil's head." Similarly the house-leek has been designated the "devil's beard," and a Norfolk name for the stinkhorn is "devil's horn." Of further plants related to his Satanic majesty is the clematis, termed ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... stood, perfectly silent, perfectly calm, gazing back at the Tiger with the look of a conqueror. Several long, heavy minutes passed. At length the villagers, peeping out from their hiding-places, looking between the broad plantain leaves or through the chinks of their wooden huts, beheld a miracle. They saw, to their amazement, the Tiger slink off, sullen and baffled, to the jungle, while the Stranger remained alone and unharmed in possession of the path. At first ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... is the rich domain, That far beneath him on the plain, Waves its wide harvests and its olive groves; More dear to him his hut, with plantain thatch'd, Where long his unambitious heart attach'd, Finds all ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... obtaining her as wife, Agastya addressed Lopamudra, saying, 'Cast thou away these costly robes and ornaments.' And at these words of her lord, that large-eyed damsel of thighs tapering as the stem of the plantain tree cast away her handsome and costly robes of fine texture. And casting them away she dressed herself in rags and barks and deerskins, and became her husband's equal in vows and acts. And proceeding ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... kindled a fire. Here was wood, too, in any quantity, an article of which he had feared in time he might be in want, and which he had already begun to husband, though used only in his simple cookery. Spitting half-a-dozen of the birds, they were soon roasted. At the same time he roasted a bunch of plantain, and, being provided with pepper and salt in his pack, as well as with some pilot-bread, and a pint-bottle of rum, we are almost ashamed to relate how our young explorer dined. Nothing was wanting ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... people are not so fastidious as to reject the lower or coarser leaves and those tainted by the earth. Usumbara produces what is considered at Zanzibar a superior article; it is kneaded into little circular cakes four inches in diameter by half an inch deep: rolls of these cakes are neatly packed in plantain-leaves for exportation. The next in order of excellence is that grown in Uhiao: it is exported in leaf or in the form called kambari, roll-tobacco, a circle of coils each about an inch in diameter. The people of Khutu and Usagara mould the pounded ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... minutes Pete stopped at the edge of a hollow, where, half covered by sedge rushes and bog plantain, there lay a good-sized pool of clear water, down to which Tom made his way, followed by his companion, and after taking a hearty draught, which was wonderfully clear and refreshing, he began to bathe his cuts and bruises, and rid himself ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... ring of earth floating in an emptiness of transparent blue. The hills, purple and arid, stood out heavily on the sky: their summits seemed to fade into a coloured tremble as of ascending vapour; their steep sides were streaked with the green of narrow ravines; at their foot lay rice-fields, plantain-patches, yellow sands. A torrent wound about like a dropped thread. Clumps of fruit-trees marked the villages; slim palms put their nodding heads together above the low houses; dried palm-leaf roofs shone afar, like roofs of gold, behind the ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... remora, lump fish, holocenter, torpedo. No. 6, then gives the class to No. 7; and as variety is the life and soul of the plan, his post may be supplied with a botanic plate, containing representations of the following flowers:—daffodil, fox-glove, hyacinth, bilberry, wild tulip, red poppy, plantain, winter green, flower de luce, common daisy, crab-tree blossom, cowslip, primrose, lords and ladies, pellitory of the wall, mallow, lily of the valley, bramble, strawberry, flowering rush, wood spurge, wild germander, dandelion, arrow-head. No. 8 monitor has on his ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... gesture, her feet and legs tending one way, while her head, turned in a different direction, was fixed in wonder upon the laird, who was more frequently heard of than seen by his tenants and dependants. The bread and honey, however, deposited on a plantain leaf, was offered and accepted in all due courtesy. The Lord Keeper, still retaining the place which he had occupied on the decayed trunk of a fallen tree, looked as if he wished to prolong the interview, but was at a loss how to introduce a ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... Philosophy Pink, Boldness Pink, Indian, Always lovely Pink, Indian, S. Aversion Pink, Mountain, Aspiring Pink, Red, Single, Pure Love Pink, Variegated, Refusal Pink, White, Ingeniousness Pink, Yellow, Disdain Plantain, What Man's Footstep Plane Tree, Genius Plum, Indian, Privation Plum Tree, Fidelity Plum, Wild, Independence Polyanthus, Pride of Riches Polyanthus, Crimson, Mystery Pomegranate, Foolishness Pomegranate, Flower, Elegance Poor Robin, Compensation Poplar, Black, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... beetle climbs with pain O'er the smooth plantain leaf, a spacious plain! Then higher still by countless steps conveyed, He gains the summit of a shivering blade, And flirts his filmy wings and looks around, Exulting in his ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... white, Lambs Quarters, Thyme, Hyssop of a very large Growth, sweet Bazil, Rosemary, Lavender: The more Physical, are Carduus Benedictus, the Scurvy-grass of America, I never here met any of the European sort; Tobacco of many sorts, Dill, Carawa, Cummin, Anise, Coriander, all sorts of Plantain of England, and two sorts spontaneous, good Vulneraries; Elecampane, Comfrey, Nettle, the Seed from England, none Native; Monks Rhubarb, Burdock, Asarum wild in the Woods, reckon'd one of the Snake-Roots; Poppies in the Garden, none wild yet discover'd; ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... more especially as it was designed to punish the weaker sex and usually those advanced in years. Before the ugly machine and between it and the road which ran past the pond to the village was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, plantain and such unsightly vegetation, which seemed to find something congenial in the soil that bore an instrument for the torture of the gentler sex; but on one side of the post and leaning against it was a wild rosebush covered ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... the garden we returned with our intelligent host once more to examine his beautiful specimens of the banana, which, with its sister fruit the plantain, forms so important a staple of food in Cuba and throughout all tropical regions. It seems that the female banana tree bears more fruit than the male, but not so large. The average clusters of the former comprise here about one hundred, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... assume, and to the Trips and Rounds played to them by some Varlet of a black fiddler, with his hat at a prodigious cock, and mounted on a Tub, like unto the sign of the Indian Bacchus at the Tobacconist's, would they dance and stamp and foot it merrily—with plenty of fruit, salt fish, pork, roasted plantain, and so forth, to regale themselves withal, not forgetting punch and sangaree—quite forgetful, poor mercurial wretches, for the time being of Fetters and the Scourge and the Driver that would hurry them to their dire labour ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... aflame, one after another, sparingly, as the lights are kindled in the candelabra of decaying palaces where the heirs of dethroned monarchs are dying out; the red and white clovers, the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,—"the white man's foot," as the Indians called it,—the wiry, jointed stems of that iron creeping plant which we call "knot-grass," and which loves its life so dearly that it is next to impossible to murder ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... paper and books. In Ceylon, for instance, the leaves of the talipot; in India, the leaves of the palm (with which they commonly covered their houses,) were used for books. In the East Indies, the leaves of the plantain tree, dried in the sun, were used for the same purpose. In China, paper is made of the inner bark of the mulberry, the bamboo, the elm, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... doubled the part of bloodthirsty pirates with their peaceful avocations; of bevies of swarthy but merry maidens rolling in on their planks on the top of vast surges; of possibly some hideous banquet of taro roots and "long pig" (baked over hot stones under a cover of plantain leaves) to follow on these primitive pastimes; even perhaps of some coloured captive maiden, wreathed in hibiscus flowers, loudly proclaiming her distaste at the idea of being compulsorily converted ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... Plantain Leaves and Cream for.—"Make ointment from plantain laves, simmered in sweet cream or fresh butter. This is ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... middle one, into which the door opened, being a little larger than the other two.... Mokenga is a beautiful village, containing about one hundred and sixty houses; they were the largest dwellings I had yet seen on the journey. The village was surrounded by a dense grove of plantain-trees, many of which had to be supported by poles, on account of the weight of the enormous bunches of plantains they bore. Little groves of lime-trees were scattered everywhere, and the limes, like ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... help from Nature, the great mother of us all. A summer moon rode high in a cloudless heaven, and far as eye could reach stretched the green wilderness of a Cuban cafetal. No forest, but a tropical orchard, rich in lime, banana, plantain, palm, and orange trees, under whose protective shade grew the evergreen coffee plant, whose dark-red berries are the fortune of their possessor, and the luxury of one-half the world. Wide avenues diverging from the mansion, with ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott

... the little old woman raked them out of the ashes with a stick, broke them open, sprinkled a bit of salt on them from the wonderful basket, and then handed one to each of the children, wrapped in a plantain leaf, so they should not burn their fingers. A piece of the eel was served to them in the same way, and Granny beamed with satisfaction as she ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... treated him kindly. He travelled through the beautiful plain of Cuttup, which contains five hundred little villages, situated near to each other, and surrounded by groves of trees, among which towered the plantain, the palm, and the cocoa-nut. The sun shone brightly upon the numerous hamlets; the oxen, cows, and sheep, presented a picture of comfort and peace; and the air was filled with the song of birds. Thence he proceeded to Dunrora, and conceived ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... know if sorrel is good for birds, and if so, in what quantity should it be given.—[Probably some birds eat it, but with the majority it is too acid. Groundsel or plantain is much better. Green food may be given freely in summer—regularly; but alternate supply ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... attention was the relief of the native Dyaks. A shrewd Dyak once defined the Malay government as "a plantain in the mouth and a thorn in the back." A plantain giving to their poor subjects a little to keep life in them; a thorn stripping them to the skin and piercing them to the bone. The description is pithy, and it is true. The exactions of the Malay chiefs were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... reflected in the giant foliage of the trees, and on the dewy herbage of the mountainsides, gemmed with the scintillations of innumerable fire-flies; while the gentle night-wind, rustling through the lofty plantain and feathery cocoa-nut, bears upon its breath a world of rich and balmy odours. Perhaps the scene is still more lovely when the pale moon flings down her rays on the chalice of the Datura arborea, brimming with nectareous dew—her own most favoured flower, delicate of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... fever and delirium continued, a native doctor, renowned for his skill, was summoned, who ordered me to be cupped in the African fashion by scarifying my back and stomach with a hot knife, and applying plantain leaves to the wounds. The operation allayed my pulse for a few hours; but as the fever came back with new vigor, it became necessary for my attendants to arouse the Mongo to a sense of my imminent danger. Yet Ormond, instead of springing with alacrity to succor a friend and retainer in affliction, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... dance, and be merry," seems to be universally adopted in this "City of the Plague." The planters' and merchants' villas immediately in the vicinity are extremely tasteful, and are surrounded by large parterres filled with plantain, banana, palm, orange, and rose trees. On the whole, were it not for its unhealthiness, Orleans would be a most desirable residence, and the largest city in the United States, as it is most decidedly the best circumstanced in ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... they have what resemble large wooden salvers, with feet called dulang, round each of which three or four persons dispose themselves; and on these are laid the talams or brass waiters which hold the cups that contain their curry, and plantain leaves or matted vessels filled with rice. Their mode of sitting is not cross-legged, as the inhabitants of Turkey and our tailors use, but either on the haunches or on the left side, supported by the left hand with ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... the belt of cotton-soil my chief showed me ran right into the Sheshaheli country. We haven't been able to prove cannibalism against that tribe in the courts; but when a Sheshaheli offers you four pounds of woman's breast, tattoo marks and all, skewered up in a plantain ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... them trinkets of various kinds, and invited them on board. Soon after, they drew together, and held a kind of council, to determine what should be done: Then they all paddled round the ship, making signs of friendship, and one of them holding up a branch of the plantain-tree, made a speech that lasted near a quarter of an hour, and then threw it into the sea. Soon after, as we continued to make signs of invitation, a fine, stout, lively young man ventured on board: He came up by the mizen chains, and jumped out of the shrouds upon the top of the awning. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... nature-noting and plant-knowing red man. It was called by the Indian "the Englishman's foot," says Josselyn, and by Kalm also, a later traveller in 1740; "for they say where an Englishman trod, there grew a plantain in each footstep." Not less closely did such old garden weeds as motherwort, groundsel, chickweed, and wild mustard cling to the white man. They are old colonists, brought over by the first settlers, and still thrive and triumph in every ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... the island the most important is a wild species of plantain or banana, afterwards found to range along the North-East coast and its islands as far as Cape York. Here I saw for the first time a species of Sciadophyllum, one of the most singular trees of the ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... puppies. All about the house, which in truth was scarcely more than an animal lair, was an earthly paradise. The air was spicily and sweetly heavy with the scents of wild aromatic plants and gorgeous tropic blooms. Overhead three breadfruit trees interlaced their noble branches. Banana and plantain trees were burdened with great bunches of ripening fruit. And huge, golden melons of the papaia, ready for the eating, globuled directly from the slender-trunked trees not one-tenth the girth of the fruits they bore. And, for Jerry, most delightful of all, there was the gurgle ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... day! I have spent all the morning lying in the grass in front of my house, under the enormous plantain tree which covers it, and shades and shelters the whole of it. I like this part of the country and I am fond of living here because I am attached to it by deep roots, profound and delicate roots which attach a man to the soil on which his ancestors were born and died, which attach him to what people ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... Maroons, was to lay waste a provision-ground or cut them off from water. But there was little satisfaction in this; the wild pine-leaves and the grapevine-withes supplied the rebels with water, and their plantation-grounds were the wild pine-apple and the plantain groves, and the forests, where the wild-boars harbored and the ringdoves were as easily shot as if they were militia-men. Nothing but sheer weariness of fighting seems to have brought about a truce at last, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... proportions and of large expansive eyes might not endure the wrongs inflicted on her in the public hall without being avenged. In the very sight of you all, O Bhima, Dussasana, through folly, dragged her trembling all over like a plantain plant, during the period of her functional illness, and after she had been won at dice, as if she were a slave. All this was known to me. Indeed, the race of Pandu had been subjugated (by foes). The Kurus, viz., ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... gnats, like smoke, around the tree-tops; midges so thick over the brook, as if you could haul a netful; tiny leaping creatures in the grass; bronze beetles across the path; blue dragonflies pondering on cool leaves of water-plantain. Blue jays flitting, a magpie drooping across from elm to elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot blundering up into the branches; missel thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on the wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward dropped by a starling; ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... The banana and plantain men carry their fruit fastened to poles. They move along quite easily with two hundred pounds or more of fruit. On the street and in the market place we hear the singsong notes of the vegetable man telling us of the excellence of his wares. These he carries on his head on an immense board, ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George

... natives cried about in a squeaking voice, enticed the unwary, in the form of plantain wine, "pombe," a liquor in great demand, "malofou," sweet beer, made from the fruit of the banana-tree and mead, a limpid mixture of honey and water fermented ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... waterproof sheet on the ground where it would be bordered with daintily traced partridge berry, and white-lined plantain leaves, and sitting on it ate their lunch. Leslie did what she could to interest Mrs. Minturn and cheer her, but at last that lady said: "Thank you dear, you are very good to me; but you can't entertain me to-day. Some other time we'll come back and bring the scores you suggest, and ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... you know that it is the most fearful place for storms in the whole world—the most awful hurricanes that come smashing down everything and killing people? You can't escape if you're in the way of the hurricane. It whirls the roofs off the houses and twists out the plantain trees just like straws. The rivers wash away whole acres of canes and swamp the farms. Sometimes the sea rages so that boats are carried right up into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... which Mr. Bowditch could get the native interpreters to translate, are derived from animals, plants and other natural objects, just as in Australia.(1) Thus Quonna is a buffalo, Abrootoo is a cornstalk, Abbradi a plantain. Other names are, in English, the parrot, the wild cat, red earth, panther and dog. Thus all the natives of this part of Africa are parrots, dogs, buffaloes, panthers, and so forth, just as the Australians ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... it said, they never stole one, and were invariably refused, for we had not any more than we wanted. The Dyaks hung their plates in loops of rattan very ingeniously against the walls of their houses; but a plantain-leaf folded up is more often used by them in lieu of plates, and they could not have a better substitute. I never enjoyed a meal so much as some cold rice and sardines eaten off a plantain-leaf in the jungle at Lundu, after a long walk to the waterfall. The servant with the provision ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... modified secondary wing-feathers in the males of Pipra; on elongated feathers in nightjars; on the species of Chasmorhynchus; on the plumage of Pelecanus onocrotalus; on the plantain-eaters; on the sexes and young of Tadorna variegata; on the colours of Lemur macaco; ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... company keep silence; and when he is full, they return fervent thanks to the gods who have conducted him safely through a complexity of dangers;—a grain of rice, falling from his lips, might have poisoned his dinner; a stain on his plantain-leaf might have turned his cake to stone. His left hand, condemned to vulgar and impolite offices, is not admitted to the honor of assisting at his repasts; to the right alone, consecrated by exemption from indecorous duties, belongs the distinction of conducting his happy grub ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... established in every considerable village,—nay, one may not unfrequently see a photographic ambulance standing at the wayside upon some vacant lot where it can squat unchallenged in the midst of burdock and plantain and apple-Peru, or making a long halt in the middle of a common by special ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... the kind waiter with the rather expressive face, who is never weary of bringing us the rice and fried plantain, which form, after all, the staple of our existence in Cuba. The waiters all do as well as they can, considering the length of the table, and the extremely short staple of the boarders' patience. As a general rule, they understand good English better than bad Spanish; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... grass went on ripening. Many and various as the breeds of men, or the trees of a forest, were the stalks that made up that greenish jungle with the waving, fawn-colored surface; of rye-grass and brome-grass, of timothy, plantain, and yarrow; of bent-grass and quake-grass, foxtail, and the green-hearted trefoil; of dandelion, dock, musk-thistle, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... then, of grief and hardship. And mamma never spoke again. She looked as pale as her gown, as she lay in the cart, with her eyes shut. She was breathing, however, and I thought she was asleep. I felt very sleepy and odd. The soldiers said I was half-starved, and they gave me a plantain that they pulled by the road-side. I wanted them to give some to mamma too; but they made me no answer. I put mine into her hand, but she let it fall; and I cried because she would not take any notice. Then one of the soldiers bade me eat my plantain; and I thought I must do ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... loss. He trembles as a plantain tree tossed up by tempest. He touches the feet of the sage and most piteously begs pardon ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... knees crossed, as Lord Buddha sits,— And, soothing with a touch the wild thing's fright, Composed its ruffled vans, calmed its quick heart, Caressed it into peace with light kind palms As soft as plantain leaves an hour unrolled; And while the left hand held, the right hand drew The cruel steel forth from the wound, and laid Cool leaves and healing honey on the smart. Yet all so little knew the boy of pain, That curiously into his wrist he pressed The arrow's barb, and winced to feel it sting, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... grass and the tall, dripping weeds, listening for the faint, foolish peeping of the wanderers. Some we found under piled fence rails, some under burdock leaves, some under nothing more protective than a plantain leaf. By ones and twos we collected them, half drowned yet shrilly remonstrant, and dropped them into the dry shed where they belonged. Then we returned to the house, very wet, feeling the kind of discouragement that usually besets ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge

... naked children running and playing in the village street. There were women grinding dried plantain in crude stone mortars, while others were fashioning cakes from the powdered flour. Out in the fields he could see still other women hoeing, ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... well worth the price (L60) of the negro's freedom, since it is now known how to cure slaves without mercury."[10] And in colonial South Carolina a slave named Caesar was particularly famed for his cure for poison, which was a decoction of plantain, hoar-hound and golden rod roots compounded with rum and lye, together with an application of tobacco leaves soaked in rum in case of rattlesnake bite. In 1750 the legislature ordered his prescription published for the benefit of the public, and the Charleston journal ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... protected. Eagles, generally All unprotected regions. Hawks, generally All unprotected regions. Crowned Pigeon, two species New Guinea. "Choncas" Locality unknown. Pitta East Indies. Magpie Europe. Touracou, or Plantain-Eater Africa. Velvet Birds Locality uncertain. "Grives" Locality uncertain. Mannikin South America. Green Parrot (now protected) India. "Dominos" (Sooty Tern) Tropical Coasts and Islands. Garnet ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... discovered until we arrived within a very short distance of the road to Spanish Town. We should then have to cross the road in the open, but having crossed it, we should come in less than a furlong to another clump of woodland, and passing through this, avoiding the plantain groves which filled that portion of the estate, we should reach the rough track leading to Dry Harbor, at a point about three miles from the big house. 'Twas a round in all of some twenty-five miles, and, as Uncle Moses assured me, ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... them off and accompanied them for the protection of the villages through which they must pass. She was able to prevent more drink being supplied to them, and all went well until, at one point on the bush track, they came upon a plantain sucker stuck in the ground, and, lying about, a cocoanut shell, palm leaves, and nuts. The fierce warriors who had been challenging each other and every one they came across to fight to the death, were paralysed at the sight of the rubbish, and ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... Trumpet Weed, or Tall or Purple Boneset or Thoroughwort; Golden-rods; Blue and Purple Asters or Starworts; White Asters or Starworts; Golden Aster; Daisy Fleabane or Sweet Scabious; Robin's or Robert's Plantain or Blue Spring Daisy; Pearly or Large-flowered Everlasting or Immortelle, Elecampane or Horseheal; Black-eyed Susan or Yellow or Ox-eye Daisy; Tall or Giant Sunflower; Sneezeweed or Swamp Sunflower; Yarrow ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... this way, gentlemen; come, M. Villefort, for a declaration to be available, should be made before the competent authorities." He then took Villefort's arm, and, at the same time, holding that of Madame Danglars under his own, he dragged the procureur to the plantain-tree, where the shade was thickest. All the other guests followed. "Stay," said Monte Cristo, "here, in this very spot" (and he stamped upon the ground), "I had the earth dug up and fresh mould put ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... large group of allied birds, called, in the charmingly concise and poetical language of technical ornithology, the Scansorial Picarians, and more generally, known to the unlearned herd (meaning you and me) by their several names of woodpeckers, cuckoos, toucans, and plantain-eaters. All the members of this great group, of which the parrots proper are only the most advanced and developed family, possess the same arrangement of the digits into front-toes and back-toes. But in none is the arrangement so perfect ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... important productions of these islands, I have mentioned hemp, although the article called Manila hemp must not be understood to be derived from the plant which produces the common hemp (Cannabis), being obtained from a species of plantain (Musa textilis), called in the Philippines "abaca." This is a native of these islands, and was formerly believed to be found only on Mindanao; but this is not the case, for it is cultivated on the south part of Luzon, and all the islands south of it. It grows on ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... here, and let us see. Nine kinds of grasses, and a rush. Six kinds of clovers and vetches; and besides, dandelion, and rattle, and oxeye, and sorrel, and plantain, and buttercup, and a little stitchwort, and pignut, and mouse-ear hawkweed, too, ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley

... gratefully, and locked her hands beneath The Squaw's chin. This left his arms free to part a path through the thickets of burweed and plantain that choked the defile, and, for fully a half-hour, he kept a good jog. But, well worn and hampered as he was, he ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... 12 o'clock. I saw there about two or three and twenty young women, most of them well habited, on their knees very busy, as if they had been weeding. I could not presently learn what the matter was; at last a young man told me, that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain, to put under their head that night, and they should dream who would be their husbands:It was to be sought for that day ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... delicately coloured trough, nearly white; this is doubled up in the centre and it at once forms a hollow tube, similar to a very thick drain tile. A handful of rice is placed within, and it is secured by tying with a fibrous strip from the plantain stem. A large pile of these neat packages is prepared for every elephant, and, when ready, the mahout sits by the heap and hands the parcels one by one to ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... and galloped and shouted. Wild horses fled from us, and we heard the grunt of boar in the fern thickets. The fan-palms, dwarfs, but graceful, intermingled with magnificent tree-ferns, while above them curved the huetu, the immense mountain plantain, called fei in Tahiti, where they are the bread of the people; they have ribbed, emerald leaves, as big as a man. Feeders of dark people in many lands for thousands of years, theirs is the same golden fruit I had eaten at breakfast with Pere Olivier, three thousand feet below. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... from the sun by day and the dews by night, while a bunch of plantains or bananas plucked fresh from the tree will furnish an abundant meal, and the water of a green cocoa-nut all the drink they desire. The plantain tree grows to about twenty feet in height, its round, soft stem being composed of the elongated foot-stalks of the leaves, and its cone of a nodding flower-spike or cluster of purple blossoms that are very graceful and beautiful. Like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... the four hundred and forty-two monkeys, for the plantain-eaters, the fruit-pigeons of the Spice Islands that feed on nutmegs, for the toucans and the flocks of parrots, parroquets, cockatoos, and other fruit-eating birds. As they did not know how to can fruit in those days, and dried fruit would be altogether ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton

... Terrace," protested the whole party, "copied, in every point, the Huang Hua Lou. But what's essential is a faultless imitation. Now were we to begin to criticise minutely the couplet just cited, we would indeed find it to be, as compared with the line 'A book when it is made of plantain leaves,' still more elegant and of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... of the common, opposite the hotel, was a row of dwelling-houses, which owing to the steep descent had a sunken look, as if they were slipping into their own cellars. The grass was too green in their yards, and the thick, matted plantain-leaves grew on both ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson



Words linked to "Plantain" :   Plantago, robin's plantain, herb, Plantago rugelii, Musa paradisiaca, rattlesnake plantain, ripple-grass, water-plantain family, Indian plantain, banana tree, common plantain, narrow-leaved water plantain, water plantain, plantain-leaved pussytoes, herbaceous plant, buckthorn, plantain tree, Plantago virginica, ribgrass, veggie, psyllium, English plantain, cart-track plant, ribbon-leaved water plantain, plantain family, Plantago media, Spanish psyllium, genus Plantago



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