Fustic is the wood of the tree Maclura tinctoria, a tree of the mulberry order growing in the West Indies. It is a large and handsome tree, and the timber, though, like most other dye-woods, brittle, or at least easily splintered, is hard and strong. It is extensively used as an ingredient in the dyeing of yellow, and is largely imported for that purpose.
Young Fustic is the wood of the Rhus cottinus or Venice sumach, a South European shrub with smooth leaves and a remarkable feathery inflorescence. It yields a fine orange colour, which, however, is not durable without a mordant. Research Fustic
The banana is a perennialherb cultivated in tropical and sub tropical climates. Bananas are fast-growing, arising from underground rhizomes. The fleshy stalks or pseudostems formed by upright concentric layers of leaf sheaths constitute the functional trunks. The true stem begins as an underground corm which grows upwards, pushing its way out through the centre of the stalk 10 to 15 months after planting, eventually producing the terminal inflorescence which will later bear the fruit. Each stalk produces one huge flowercluster and then dies. New stalks then grow from the rhizome. The large rectangular or elliptic leaf blades are extensions of the sheaths of the pseudostem and are joined to them by fleshy, deeply grooved, short petioles. The leaves unfurl, as the plant grows, at the rate of one per week in warm weather, and extend upward and outward , becoming as much as 2.5 metres long and 0.75 metres wide. They may be entirely green, green with maroon patches, or green on the upper side and red-purple beneath. The leaf veins run from the mid-rib straight to the outer edge of the leaf. Even when the wind shreds the leaf, the veins are still able to function. Approximately 44 leaves will appear before the inflorescence. The banana inflorescence shooting out from the heart in the tip of the stem, is at first a large, long-oval, tapering, purple-clad bud. As it opens, the slim, nectar-rich, tubular, toothed, white flowers appear. They are clustered in whorled double rows along the floral stalk, each cluster covered by a thick, waxy, hood like bract, purple outside and deep red within.
The flowers occupying the first five to fifteen rows are female. As the rachis of the inflorescence continues to elongate, sterile flowers with abortive male and female parts appear, followed by normal staminate ones with abortive ovaries. The two latter flower types eventually drop in most edible bananas. The ovaries contained in the first (female) flowers grow rapidly, developing parthenocarpically into clusters of fruits, called hands. The number of hands varies with the species and variety.
The fruit (technically a berry) turns from deep green to yellow or red, and may range from ten centimetres to thirty centimetres in length and two centimetres to five centimetres in diameter. The flesh, ivory-white to yellow or salmon-yellow, may be firm, astringent, even gummy with latex when unripe, turning tender and slippery, or soft and mellow or rather dry and mealy or starchy when ripe. The flavour may be mild and sweet or slightly acid with a distinct appletone. The common cultivated types are generally seedless with just vestiges of ovules visible as brown specks. Occasionally, cross-pollination with wild types will result in a number of seeds in a normally seedless variety. Research Banana
In botany, a bract is a specialized, modified or reduced leaf with a single flower or inflorescence growing in their axil, and thus distinguished from the ordinary leaf, from the axil of which the leaf-bud proceeds. It differs from other leaves in shape or colour, and is generally situated on the peduncle near the flower. It is, sometimes called also the floral leaf. Research Bract
In botany, a cyme is a mode of inflorescence in which the principal axis terminates in a flower, and a number of secondary axes rise from the primary, each of these terminating in a flower, while from these secondary axes others may arise terminating in the same way, and so on, giving a flat-topped or rounded mass. Examples may be found in the common elder and the Caryophyllaceae. Research Cyme
Cyperaceae is the sedge family of plants somewhat resembling grasses, but differing from them in the possession of triangular solid stems, closed leaf sheaths, and no ligules. The inflorescence is a group of spikes of glumes, in the axial of each being three stamens and one carpel. Research Cyperaceae
Feverfew (Pyrethrum Parthenium) is a perennialherbaceous plant of the family Compositae common on waste land and near hedges. It bears numerous small heads of flowers on an erect stem, with the lower flowers borne on longer stalks so that the whole inflorescence reaches the same level. The flowers have white ray florets. The leaves are stalked, repeatedly cut, curled and delicate green. The plant possesses tonic and bitter qualities, and was supposed to be a valuable febrifuge, whence its name. Research Feverfew
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Fustic
