Plant of the Week
Banana
Latin: Musa x paradisiacal
 For supper, I had status food - cherry Jell-O with bananas. Today, we don't
think of either of these lowly foods as anything special, but both became part
of the mainstream American diet during the 20th century.
Electric refrigeration made Jell-O a reality while modern transportation
moved bananas from their tropical homeland to the most distant corners of the
country. Originally, only seaport towns had bananas.
Bananas are Old World herbs that are grown in all parts of the tropics that
have sufficient rainfall. The banana of commerce in North America is Musa x
paradisiaca, a sterile, usually triploid (three sets of chromosomes instead
of a pair), seedless hybrid. Most of our bananas come from Central America where
large, multinational corporations control all aspects of production, marketing
and distribution.
The edible banana is an herbaceous perennial that grows from a rhizomatous
crown. The banana stem, which can grow to 20 feet tall with large, tattered,
oar-shaped leaves, is actually a cluster of leaf petioles called a pseudostem.
In a tropical environment with good growing conditions, these pseudostems send
forth a banana flower after about 10 months of growth.
Describing a banana flower is difficult to do in a family newspaper. The
terminal bud on the ever-lengthening inflorescence is usually a maroon,
cone-shaped affair about six inches across. Bananas form in a bunch behind the
bud and take about 100 days from flowering until the fruit are ripe. The stalks
are harvested green and ripened at the port of entry by exposing them to
ethylene gas, a natural plant growth hormone involved in fruit ripening.
When a pseudostem flowers, it dies. When the banana bunch is harvested, the
pseudostem is cut to the ground to encourage new stems to develop.
The first shipment of bananas to the United States occurred in 1804 when
Capt. John Chester sent 30 bunches to Boston aboard the schooner Reynard. As the
19th century progressed, bananas became more commonplace with New Orleans
becoming the principle port of entry for the fruit by 1890.
U. P. Hedrick, a horticulturist who grew up in the wilds of the Upper
Peninsula of Michigan, described in his autobiography the excitement he
remembered when trains began delivering bananas to his local store in the 1890s.
Tulsa residents about the same time began receiving shipments of bananas, but
their initial reaction was lukewarm until someone explained they had to be
peeled before they were eaten. Today, bananas are the most popular fruit in the
nation.
Bananas are not commercially produced in the continental U.S. because they
require a completely frost free environment. But ornamental banana plantings are
becoming more common as gardeners go for a more tropical look in their gardens.
Banana plants can be saved from year to year by cutting the foliage off and
saving the main trunk. The trunk can be wrapped in a tarp and stored like so
much cord wood in any location where it will not freeze. Plant it outside after
the danger of frost is past in a location protected from strong winds. Water
liberally during the summer.
By: Gerald Klingaman, retired
Extension Horticulturist
- Ornamentals
Extension News -
January 23, 2004
Back to Archives A - D
|
