The Hawaiian Archipelago - Six Months Among The Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, And Volcanoes Of The Sandwich Islands By Isabella L. Bird
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And Here It Is Everywhere
With Its Shining Shade, Its Smooth Fat Green Stem, Its Crown Of Huge
Curving Leaves From Four To Ten Feet Long, And Its Heavy Cluster Of
A Whorl Of Green Or Golden Fruit, With A Pendant Purple Cone Of
Undeveloped Blossom Below.
It is of the tropics, tropical; a thing
of beauty, and gladness, and sunshine.
It is indigenous here, and
wild, but never bears seeds, and is propagated solely by suckers,
which spring up when the parent plant has fruited, or by cuttings.
It bears seed, strange to say, only (so far as is known) in the
Andaman Islands, where, stranger still, it springs up as a second
growth wherever the forests are cleared. Go to the palm-house, find
the Musa sapientum, magnify it ten times, glorify it immeasurably,
and you will have a laggard idea of the banana groves of Hilo.
The ground is carpeted with a grass of preternaturally vivid green
and rankness of growth, mixed with a handsome fern, with a caudex a
foot high, the Sadleria cyathoides, and another of exquisite beauty,
the Micropia tenuifolia, which are said to be the commonest ferns on
Hawaii. It looks Elysian.
Hilo is a lively place for such a mere village; so many natives are
stirring about, and dashing along the narrow roads on horseback.
This is a large airy house, simple and tasteful, with pretty
engravings and water-colour drawings on the walls. There is a large
bath-house in the garden, into which a pure, cool stream has been
led, and the gurgle and music of many such streams fill the sweet,
soft air.
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