{311e} Its neighbour, with large leaves, gray and rough underneath, flowers as big as your two hands, with greenish petals and a purple eye, followed by fat scaly yellow apples, is the Sweet- sop; {311f} and that privet-like bush with little flowers and green berries a Guava, {311g} of which you may eat if you will, as you may of the rest.
The truth, however, must be told.

These West Indian fruits are, most of them, still so little improved by careful culture and selection of kinds, that not one of them (as far as we have tried them) is to be compared with an average strawberry, plum, or pear.
But how beautiful they are all and each, after their kinds! What a joy for a man to stand at his door and simply look at them growing, leafing, blossoming, fruiting, without pause, through the perpetual summer, in his little garden of the Hesperides, where, as in those of the Phoenicians of old, 'pear grows ripe on pear, and fig on fig,' for ever and for ever! Now look at the vegetables.

At the Bananas and Plantains first of all.

A stranger's eye would not distinguish them.

The practical difference between them is, that the Plaintain {311h} bears large fruits which require cooking; the Banana {312a} smaller and sweeter fruits, which are eaten raw.