Nature Bulletin No. 604   May 14, 1960
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Daniel Ryan, President
David H Thompson, Senior Naturalist

****:THE BANANA

A banana fits the human hand and mouth as neatly as if it had been 
made to order Merely zip the skin down and bite -- no messy fingers, 
no squirting juice, and no seeds to spit out, Besides, it is sweet, full of 
flavor and nourishing. Chicagoans should know  They ate 5,000 
carloads of them in 1959 -- more than apples, oranges, melons or any 
other fresh fruit.

What happens before we see ripe, yellow bananas in stores and fruit 
stands is unknown to most of us That is because all of them are 
imported from the swampy, fever-ridden tropics of the West Indies, 
Mexico, Central America and South America -- the so-called "banana 
republics". The only ones grown in the United States are kept as 
curiosities in greenhouses or in subtropical Florida.

The history and travels of the banana date back to ancient times. 
Originally it was probably a native of the hot, steamy jungles of 
Malaya and the East Indies. About 300 B.C., Alexander the Grate's 
troops enjoyed them in India where they had already been cultivated 
for centuries. Very early, it was transplanted to east Africa and, 
thence, by Arab traders to the Guinea Coast of west Africa where it got 
the name "banana". From here, in 1482, Portuguese explorers carried 
it to the Canary Islands In 1516, Father Tomas de Berlanga, a Spanish 
missionary, brought a few roots from the Canaries to Santo Domingo 
in the West Indies and introduced this abundant, staple food to the 
New World, The first shipload of fruit was landed in New York in 
1830. After that it was only an occasional novelty on American 
markets until nearly 1900 when the great expansion of the 
banana-growing industry began.

The banana is a strange plant and our notions about it are likely to be 
mistaken. In the first place it is not a tree even though it reaches tree 
size. What appears to be a tall, sturdy trunk is really the broad leaf-
stems wrapped tightly in overlapping layers It has no wood. At the top 
is a crown of ten to twenty huge, tattered, paddle-shaped leaves, each 
about 2 feet wide and 10 feet long.

Anew banana plant is started by burying a large chunk of an 
underground rootstock with an "eye", as we plant a potato -- never 
from a seed. After ten months or a year, when the plant is 15 to 30 feet 
high, a great purplish bud, like a ripe eggplant, pushes out of the 
crown of leaves and bends over. The bud opens to expose yellowish 
flowers, each cluster of which becomes one of the "hands" of bananas 
on the bunch. As the bananas grow plump, they turn upward, which is 
upside down to the way we see them hanging in the grocery. Two or 
three months after the bud appears, although still quite green, the 
bunch is ready to be harvested and shipped. Bananas which ripen on 
the plant have a poor flavor.

A banana plant bears only one bunch of fruit. On plantations, after the 
bunch is harvested, the plant is chopped down and allowed to rot on 
the ground. New sprouts spring up about the stump, Later, these 
shoots are all cut off except one or two which, after a year, produce 
more fruit, Since it is tropical, the fruit matures and is shipped to 
American markets every month in the year. Operating a banana 
plantation is as complicated as a three-ring circus or an army in the 
field.

A close kin of the banana plant with the same general size and 
appearance is the Plantain -- not even remotely related to our common 
lawn weed of the same name A native of India, its fruit is widely 
cultivated for cooking in the West Indies and Central America 
Plantains are not eaten raw.

Another near relative with the same general appearance as the banana 
is the Abaca or Manila Hemp plant of the Philippines Fibers extracted 
from its leaves are the source of our famous manila rope.