The plantain in the Spanish Indies (from 1516)

An Asian crop that reached the Americas because a Dominican friar carried it from Gran Canaria to Santo Domingo in 1516. Oviedo names the man and the year, says he saw the plants in the Canaries himself in 1520, identifies the fruit with the musas of Alexandria, states plainly that it is not native and that the Spanish name for it is wrong — and records the ant plague that made Santo Domingo uproot many of them.