Sweet Cassava Its Culture Properties And Uses

Author : Harvey W. Wiley
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781330783399
Total Pages : 30 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (833 download)

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Download or read book Sweet Cassava written by Harvey W. Wiley and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-06 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Sweet Cassava: Its Culture, Properties, and Uses In the southern peninsula of Florida, and growing up well into the frost belt, is found in many localities a cultivated plant known as cassava, or sweet cassava. From a careful study of the climatic conditions under which the plant flourishes it is safe to assume that it may also be grown with success in southern Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Cassava is a name which should properly apply only to the purified starch derived from the roots of the plant, but it has passed into general use to designate the plant itself. Botanically, the plant is known as Janipha manihot, Manihot utilissima, Jatropha manihot, Manihot aipi, Manihot l flingii, and Manihot palmata. One of its common names is manioc plant. The fleshy root of this plant yields the greatest portion of the daily food of the natives of many portions of tropical America, and one of its forms of starch is imported largely into this country as tapioca. It is a woody or shrubby plant, growing from fleshy, tuberous roots, the stems being smooth, with nodules where the leaves grow. There is properly only one variety of the plant growing in Florida, while that variety which grows in the tropics contains so much hydrocyanic acid as to render it poisonous. The variety grown in the subtropical region of Florida, however, contains only a small quantity of hydrocyanic acid, and is therefore commonly known as sweet cassava. Some of the growers of the plant in Florida claim that two varieties grow.in the State, one of which is poisonous on account of. the large amount of hydrocyanic acid which it contains, and the other nonpoisonous, containing only a little hydrocyanic acid. It is quite probable, however, that after the poisonous.variety has grown for a long while in a subtropical climate it would lose largely its. poisonous properties. The leaves of the poisonous variety in the tropics usually have seven branches palmately divided. The leaves of the sweet variety are usually only five-parted. The botanists clearly recognize two distinct varieties. For instance, in the Treasury of Botany, page 718, the following remarks are made: It is quite clear that while the root of one is bitter and a virulent poison that of the other is sweet and wholesome, and is commonly eaten cooked as a vegetable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."