Musa spp.

banana

The word “banana” is a general term denoting several different species and hybrids in the genus Musa of the banana family, Musaceae. Bananas usually refer to the sweet yellow fruits that are eaten raw while plantains are the slightly larger version used for cooking. In other cultures, there are many different names and preparations for these two basic types of edible “bananas”. Most seedless, edible bananas are a hybrid between Musa acuminata and M. balbisiana called Musa x paradisiaca.

Banana plants are often referred to as trees but they are actually giant, perennial herbs with a succulent pseudostem for their ‘trunk’. This pseudostem can be up to 25 feet tall and is comprised of the leaf bases wrapped around each other to form a cylinder; there is no woodiness to them at all and a sharp machete will make quick work of cutting them down. If you’re looking to rid yourself of banana plants, however, it’s a little more involved as there are underground rhizomes to contend with, similar to bamboo. Just below the soil surface there is a fleshy corm or swollen underground plant stem that creeps along giving rise to new shoots (young banana plants), which end up replacing the mature plants that die back naturally after flowering and fruiting.

The inflorescence or flower stalk, sometimes called the “heart” of the banana, due to its resemblance to a large purple heart, is a spike-like shoot growing from the tip of the stem that eventually droops towards the ground. The large purple heart-shaped flower bud contains layers of bracts that open each day revealing several rows of flowers. As the young fruits develop, they look like small green fingers. The fully developed fruits in each cluster become the "hand" of bananas.

The fruit is technically a berry although it doesn’t bear much physical resemblance to better known berries such as blueberries. Bananas turn from green to yellow or red, and will ripen off the stem once they have reached their mature size. In fact, the ethylene produced by ripe bananas can be used to ripen other fruit by placing it in a paper sack with bananas.

Due to their hybrid nature, bananas are sterile and do not produce mature, viable seeds. The little black specks inside bananas are the only visible remains of the ovules in our commercial varieties. These are propagated vegetatively by pieces of the underground corm or shoot sprouts. Wild bananas may be full of hard, dark seeds and contain very little flesh.

Some species are grown only as ornamentals or for the fibers in their stems. These fibers are used for making strong ropes, cloth and tea bags, among other things.