There has been considerable discussion as to whether they were growing in America before the discovery of the New World. The unripe fruit is rich in starch, which on ripening turns into sugar. The most generally used fruits are derived from Musa paradisiaca , of which an enormous number of varieties and forms exist in cultivation. The species is probably a native of India and Southern Asia. Other species are M. acuminata in the Malay Archipelago, M. Fehi , in Tahiti, and M. Cavendishii , the so-called Chinese Banana, which has a thinner rind and is found in cooler countries.
Plantains often reach a considerable size.
The sugar is chiefly cane-sugar. In East Africa and elsewhere an intoxicating drink is prepared from the fruit. The rootstock which bears the leaves is, just before the flowering period, soft and full of starch, and is sometimes used as food in Abyssinia, and the young shoots of several species are cooked and eaten. Banana root has some employment as an anthelmintic and has been reported useful in reducing bronchocele. The Principal applied a ligature eight inches above the bitten part and then cut it with a lancet and applied permanganate of potash, making the wound bleed freely.