Banana fruit: Journey from South East Asian to North America

Portuguese sailors brought bananas to Europe from West Africa in the early fifteenth century. Portuguese called it by its Arab name of al-vaneyra. The islanders of Sao Tome called the fruit abana. Its Guinean name banema, which became banana in English, was first found in print in the seventeenth century.

The original banana has been cultivated and used since ancient times, even pre-dating the cultivation of rice. The wild ancestor of edible bananas (M. acuminata Colla and M. balbisiana Colla), except for the fe’i bananas, are centered in Malesia, a term that refers to the entire region from Thailand to New Guinea roughly the main trading are of the Malay mariners.

Bananas may initially have been introduced into Africa by Arab traders who brought the plants from Malaysia. By the fourteenth century banana had colonized the whole of Africa. An Arab traveler mentions it as existing in the south of Morocco.

The banana was carried by sailors to the Canary Islands and the West Indies, finally making it to North America with Spanish missionary Friar Tomas de Berlanga is believed to have been the first to bring bananas plants to the New World.

Friar Tomas de Berlanga set up the first New World banana plantation in 1516. Banana plantation were soon established throughout European colonies in the Caribbean as well as in South and Central America.

The yellow sweet banana, much different than its starchy cousin the plantain was discovered in 1836 in Jamaica Jean Francois Poujot, who found one of the banana trees on his plantation was bearing yellow fruit rather than green or red. Upon tasting the new discovery, he found it to be sweet in its raw state, without the need for cooking. He quickly began cultivating this sweet variety.

The sweet banana quickly made its way around the fledging colonies and onto Europe, where it was used extensively in baked goods and desserts. Soon they were being imported from the Caribbean to New Orleans, Boston, and New York, and were considered such an exotic treat, they were eaten on a plate using a knife and fork.

In the United Sates, the banana was initially regarded as a luxury fruit and a foreign one at that. Bananas began appearing in New Orleans markets during the 1830s and 1840s. Sweet bananas were all the rage at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, selling for a hefty ten cents each.
Banana fruit: Journey from South East Asian to North America

History of nutmeg

Myristica fragrans, of the Myristicaceae family, the nutmeg, is a large tropical tree with small yellow flowers and large, very fragrant.

For many years, this spice has been used as an aromatic stimulant, abortifacient, antiflatulent and as a means to induce menses. Nutmeg has its origin in the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Arab traders brought nutmeg to India, then to Europe, and eventually it was taken to the Caribbean by the Spanish.

Around the year 1000 the Persian physician Ibn Sina or Avicenna the most remarkable man of his time, described the muchk as jansi ban, nut of Banda.

The first really authenticated nutmegs are thought to have arrived at the Byzantine court in the 16th century, coming by way of the Bedouins; the Greeks translated the Arab word mesk, from Persia muchk, as moskhos.

The Banda Islands were discovered by the Portuguese in 1512. There, they found the the nutmeg tree on the islands. Beginning in the 17th century, the Dutch controlled the Spice Islands, and they monopolized the spice trade until British obtained nutmeg seedlings from Banda Islands at the end of the 18th century.

During the Middle Ages, fashionable Europeans carried their own nutmegs and graters to eating establishments as a status symbol.

In 1819, 100,000 of nutmeg trees were transplanted by the British Government to Ceylon and Bengal but the plantations were not successful.

References to the central nervous system affects of nutmeg appeared in the first part of the 19th century when Purkinje developed lethargy after consuming three nutmeg nuts.

Nutmeg was taken to the Caribbean island of St. Vincent in 1802, and then to Grenada in 1843 where cultivation expanded.
History of nutmeg