Fruit Tree of the Day: Banana
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I hope everyone knows what a banana tastes like. 
You may be surprised to learn that, like mangoes, there are actually a bunch of different varieties of bananas than the ones you usually see in stores. The default banana, Cavendish, is probably the blandest of them all. My favorite is the Thai banana (other names: Blue Java, Ice Cream). When fully ripe and almost black, it tastes like apple banana ice cream. You can actually find this in many Asian markets around Florida.
You can also find bananas that have seeds and are pink.. These taste about like Cavendish bananas, but look neater (the seeds are annoying, though. There’s a reason they bred seedless bananas). The trees are pretty too. I should mention how they grow.
You’ll rarely find a banana tree growing by itself. That’s because, once a tree gets established, its root system (called a rhizome) spreads out near the surface and new trees can grow out of that. That’s a good thing, because each banana tree can only give one crop. Normally, banana trees would be growing huge leaves all the time, keeping pace to replace the quickly-dying leaves–but when it’s making fruit, it puts all its energy into doing that… and then the other leaves die and it’s left with no leaves. Poof! The tree’s dead. But, since all the other banana trees have grown out of the same rhizome, they can keep living until they bear fruit. So, if you plant a tree, have a layer of dirt without mulch or grass so that new trees can grow up.
Also, since bananas are such fast growers, they need a lot of fertilizer to keep up. You should follow the information listed on UF’s website for how to fertilize them (also, some banana trees that come out of the rhizome won’t bear fruit, so you’ll want to cut them down before they steal all the fertilizer from the ones that will. The same site describes how to tell the difference).
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You’re baaad. I’m in NE FL, and have about a third of an acre, backing onto a retention pond. You’ve given me the planting urge.
@OldCatLady That’s goooood. My work here is done! I could retire early… but I need to give everyone else on the forums the same urge.
Are you going to plant anything that I’ve posted so far? What’s your favorite?
@Weboh Gotta getta mango, and my neighbors have bananas, so maybe I’ll get some pups. Tomorrow I’ll browse the outdoor market nearby. They’ve got a couple of stands with trees and vines I’ve never tried. I only have calamondins and one Satsuma. Wild cherries and beautyberries abound.
Well on the “bright” side, the bland Cavendish has a limited future, as all Cavendish’s are clones, and a new strain of Panama disease threatens every plantation in the world. Same thing happened to the good bananas in the 1950’s (Gros Michel). Hopefully either the big fruit producers will learn a lesson and start growing more diverse banana cultures or come up with some other smart solution before we no longer have anything to use for scale in photographs.
@mehcuda67 In fact, you know the strong artificial banana flavor that’s in all kinds of banana candy and stuff? Turns out bananas actually used to taste like that back in the 50s and before, those Gros Michel are what the flavor is supposed to taste like. Work is being done to find the next breed to replace Cavendish, that won’t be susceptible to the same disease that’s threatening them, but I haven’t heard much about actual progress in that.
@kevinrs @mehcuda67 And if they don’t solve this issue soon the price of bananas will sky rocket. Hopefully they will focus on taste as well when they look for a fungus resistant version.
In this article:
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-quest-banana-extinction.html
I found it interesting that planting Chinese Leeks in with the bananas kills the fungus (takes 2 years). We’d probably flood the leek market if we did that which would cause an economic disaster for folks who grew those… Maybe they can kill the fungus and then replant the older, tastier bananas that all but died out on banana plantations 50 years ago.
@mehcuda67 Well, the reason the bananas we have aren’t diverse is because we wanted to make them seedless. Seeds in bananas are really annoying; It’s like a guava where they take up basically the whole edible part of the fruit, and they aren’t soft either. Without seeds, you have to be reliant on clones, which of course lowers the diversity.
I just wish they’d switch to Thai bananas. They’re a million times better.
@kevinrs @Kidsandliz @Weboh You raise an interesting point. This fungus is the 4th iteration, at least according to their tracking numbers. I wonder if the original fungus variant is still in the soil after 60 years. Maybe Gros Michel would be safe again.
@Weboh Noosa yogurt is wonderful but for a while they had a passion fruit flavor that had seeds - super annoying!
@mehcuda67 @Weboh It looks like the selection for seedless happened in prehistory. And lots of stuff is grown as clones, like most common fruit trees, apples, peaches etc, are grown from grafts. A good variety is found, and buds from that tree are placed on a standard rootstock, repeat. They don’t breed true, because they are hybrids. Most things besides bananas and potatoes don’t have the problem of one cloned variety making up nearly all of the global market though.
@kevinrs @mehcuda67 Good point. There’s still a little bit of variation in grafted clones, though, because the rootstock is still grown from seed.
I guess bananas (and potatoes) are different because they clone themselves, so there’s zero variation. And then you have mangosteen where even the seeds turn into clones…
@kevinrs @Kidsandliz @mehcuda67 No, the current fungus strain is still there and still affects Gros Michel. Fungi last forever and are really hard to kill, since 99% of it is underground.
@mehcuda67 @Weboh yeah, the rootstock varies, but also you don’t have nearly everyone on the planet growing the exact same variety. We’ve got cavendish bananas, and russet potatoes, everything else is mostly grown for novelty. Both have the threat of disease wiping out the industry looming.
@kevinrs @Weboh I didn’t know that about mangosteen - amazing.
@kevinrs @mehcuda67 That’s true. I don’t know why we chose the blandest potato and banana we could find and made the majority of the market be them. I guess since they’re hardy and have been working fine so far, growers keep on selecting them.
And Americans don’t know how to select tasty produce, so the growers don’t care. Cultivars are chosen first for shipping well, second for looks, and lastly, if possible, for taste. They’ll happily sacrifice taste to get the other two. Apples are really the only thing we have a choice on, and even then red delicious (the blandest variety) have inexplicably been the most popular for years…
@mehcuda67 I don’t want to lose my bananas!
@mehcuda67 @Weboh Size is also above taste. Read about the previous potato, that the russet replaced, after the great potato famine, was called the lunker. High, and reliable yield are probably tied with shipping well.
Part of the selection is related to why white bread is popular. Things like white flour were once expensive, and only available to the rich, and so are seen as better. There is the whole perception of purity involved too.
Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a banana
Plantains are awesome too
LEGOS! EGGOS! STRATEGO! AWESOME!
Banana leaves have been used as plates for food for centuries before ceramic/glass plates became cheap and widely available. It would also be considered eco-friendly.
@asplus they have also been used to wrap food to then cook the food over a fire.
@asplus @Kidsandliz We had a tiny Asian grocery store here for a while, run by two sisters from Indonesia. They sold these little rice and chicken things wrapped in a piece of banana leaf and steamed, called “lemper.” They were SO GOOD! I miss that store.
@Kidsandliz @Kyeh yes, steaming fish in banana leaves is very common. There are plenty of recipes online.
@asplus They’re still used a plates in many parts of India. Lots of Hindus there are concerned about the ritual purity of dishes, and they know that banana leaves haven’t been touched by impure things before. Also, lots of people there don’t have access to clean water to clean reusable dishes, anyway.
As your local Captain I need to mention one should not bring Bananas on boats.
Bananas are considered very bad luck on boats and some are very firm in this superstitious belief even today.
Why you ask?
Well Bananas are the only tropical fruit that do not have enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy in the time before we understood scurvy.
Bananas also used to be brought on board in the huge full Banana grouping and as such sometimes deadly Banana spiders would come aboard and then get out and kill crew members (creepier then even @eluno likes)
@CaptAmehrican
/image banana spider
@CaptAmehrican @RiotDemon whoa! I just saw a spider similar to this one outside my house. Maybe there’s a hidden banana tree around.
@CaptAmehrican @ELUNO @RiotDemon Those photos look similar to the big spiders in north florida and south georgia that we’d run into canoeing a lot. Except they were fluffier. Legs were yellow and black. Body was also yellow and black. I can no longer remember if it had any other colors on it. Lots of “hair” all over it so it was all soft and fuzzy (yeah I had them fall off of webs and land on my head, face, etc. and run across me so I know how soft and fuzzy they were).
@CaptAmehrican @Kidsandliz @RiotDemon sounds fluffily cute!
@CaptAmehrican @ELUNO @RiotDemon They were cute, and I was told they were banana spiders as a nickname but they don’t look exactly like those photos though so no idea what they are. I was not a fan of them running across me or dealing with a ton of spider web strung across the canoeing channels in the swamp or where we’d camp.
So when the banana tree dies after it bears It fruit do you have to cut it down or does it shrivel up and go away?
@Star2236 You have to cut it down. As noted above, it will never bear fruit again. It’s OK to cut it flush with the ground. A new tree will rise up from the rhizome (more or less the root system).
That is also what makes bananas hard to kill when you decide you no longer want them wherever you’ve planted them as well.
@Star2236 They aren’t even technically a tree, but a large herb.