The frond of the banana has straight seams, as a good pair of nylons used to have, so it's easy to tear along them and make squares of bright luminous green, nature's own shot silk. Which is what Adam and Eve probably did when they made shift with 'aprons' to hide their shame from God in the garden. In some countries where Spanish and Portuguese are spoken - which means parts of the Caribbean as well as Latin America - the word for fig is used of the banana, so this may be another example of those inspired clerical slips which result in widespread conventions. That the figleaf is hard to fix to the body every child confronted with a Renaissance statue has noticed. Banana leaves, on the other hand, can be draped and threaded - like cloth.

LRB 25 May 1995 | PDF Download