Wonderful Banana

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Wonderful Banana

Bananas: a great source of potassium, an excellent source of vitamins, and the most recognizable fruit on the planet. After all, you don’t come across many fruits that look like crescent moon.

Those annoying strings on bananas are actually important

Have you ever wondered why bananas have those annoying AF little strings that you have to methodically peel off every time.

Turns out those fibrous bits actually have a name. They're called "phloem bundles." If you've remember anything from Biology, you might remember that phloem has an important function in the growth of plants.

According to Nicholas D. Gillitt, Ph.D. in physical/inorganic chemistry, "Phloem bundles are necessary for the adequate disposition of nutrients throughout the plant." In addition to being actually useful, Gillitt confirmed that they are very edibles.

Why Bananas Are Curved

Dole, the food company behind distribution of bananas all over the world, have the answers. Dole explain how the fruit grows out of banana flowers, which start as buds that grow out of the pseudostem (the strong trunk in the middle). See below:

Beneath each flower petal, a row of tiny banana fruits start to grow.

Once they're much bigger in size, the fruit goes through a process called negative geotropism. Which basically means instead of continuously grow towards the ground, they start to turn towards the sun, in order to retrieve light.

Dole say the fruit does this because bananas grow in rainforests, where there is little sunlight, and if they were to grow towards the small amount of light that penetrates sideways through the vegetation, the plant could overbalance and topple over.

So, they're forced to grow upwards towards the breaks of light in the canopy.

Bananas Can’t Reproduce

The bananas we are all know and love, known as Cavendish, are in fact a hybrid of two other plant species. It has no seeds and has only been able to reproduce with the aid of farmers, who remove and transplant part of the plant’s stem in order to create our favourite yellow fruit.

Talking About Bananas

The next time you need to impress someone, peel off these terms to show your banana brain.

• Finger—an individual banana fruit
• Hand—a group of bananas, which can number up to 20
• Bunch—a cluster of banana hands; also called a banana stem
• Pulp—the part of the banana you eat
• Epidermis—banana peel; you can eat these, too, cooked or raw
• Phloem—the "strings" on banana fruit
• Musa—the banana genus; or Musa sapientum, if you want to be specific

More Factoids

1. Commercial banana plants are reproduced by using banana pups. The mature banana plant forms rhizomes that grow into a little plants known as pups that can be removed and planted elsewhere.
2. Miss Chiquita was "born" in 1963, or at least that's when she made her debut on the banana labels; she made no mention of her age at the time.
3. Americans eat 27 pounds of bananas each year, on average.
4. World record for the most bananas peeled and eaten in one minute: 8
5. Harry Belefonte's "Banana Song" appeared on Calypso, the first album to sell over 1,000,000 copies.
6. The Cavendish banana is named for the 7th Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish, who acquired the variety from Mauritius and cultivated it in England. The plant became an official cultivar in 1836 before making its way back to tropical regions, where it now is primarily grown.

Miss Chiquita 

Get to know our first lady of fruit

In her early years, Miss Chiquita found fame in the fruit aisle as an animated banana. Drawn in 1944 by cartoonist Dik Browne, creator and illustrator of Hägar the Horrible and Hi and Lois comics, Miss Chiquita put a personal face on Chiquita bananas. 

She showcased a festive and fun personality, as the resident expert for everything you ever wanted to know about bananas.