bananas

[umm]

if a banana tree cannot reseed itself because it has no seeds,how do we get new trees and where did the first one come from??

[Clanad]

According to Ask a Scientist... Cultivated bananas are parthenocarpic (with sterile fruit), while wildbananas did have seeds. The fruit was probably a result of co-evolution with its pollinators and the animals that feed upon it and spread its seeds before cultivated forms. Further, the site states ""The banana (Musa accuminata) is a berry formed from a superior ovary of three joined carpels arranged in an axile placentation. The flowers are born on long and pendulous inflorescence which are usually unisexual, that is, the female flowers are born near to the base of the peduncle (producing the typical banana berry fruits) while the male flowers are born on the tip of the same peduncle. Seed may be produced or more usually, develop the berry parthenocarpically. Both the seeded and the parthenocarpic berry are very similar in structure when flowering."

[emma_26]

dont answer your question but i thought bananas were actually a herb not a fruit? thats what i read somewhere anyway.

[kempie]

emma_26 - The banana plant (commonly called the banana tree) is indeed a perennial herb, however the yellow thing you peel and eat is a berry i.e a simple fruit having a skin surrounding one or more seeds in a fleshy pulp. As Clanad explains the cultivated banana is sterile; the berry only contains vestigial seeds, reduced to specks and not viable for reproduction.

[wildwood]

To actually answer your question: New trees are grown from rhyzomes; a piece of thickened root cut from the mature tree and replanted. Pretty much the same way as new dahlias and many other plants are grown.

[n00dles]

Ist Q...

When in Tenerife, and looking around a small banana plantation, we were told that the long black dangly bit (no laughing, B00) under the banana(s) dropped down on the ground when mature and replanted itself making a new tree...

2nd Q...

Sorry, don't know...