Home > Finishing > Where do the caterpillars come from? Types of caterpillars - description, features and interesting facts. Where do caterpillars live?

Where do the caterpillars come from? Types of caterpillars - description, features and interesting facts. Where do caterpillars live?

Some children and adults think that bananas hang on palm trees, where they are collected as fruit. In fact, this plant is a herbaceous species, but of gigantic height. Amazing facts where bananas grow and how they reproduce may surprise many people.

Botanical description

According to the classification, bananas belong to perennial herbaceous plants with thick-skinned fruits and berries. The question immediately arises: where are its seeds and how does a banana reproduce in nature?

There are more than 40 species and almost 500 varieties of bananas in the world. The fruit is native to the countries of Southeast Asia and Malaysia. Wild bananas grow there right in the forest in the form of grass with thick trunks (up to 20 cm in diameter), reaching a height of 5 m. Lateral leaves and shoots form around the main stem, which are replaced by new ones as they die. Outwardly, they strongly resemble a palm tree.

As a rule, each “palm” grows only one bunch of numerous fruits of different colors (photo below). Wild bananas are oval-shaped fruits that must be peeled to extract the seeds. And the popular and beloved fruits on supermarket shelves are fruits specially bred by breeders for consumption.

How bananas reproduce in nature: features

The plant has a typical herbaceous species the life cycle, which begins with the appearance of a false stem and leaves, continues with flowering, ripening of fruits and subsequent death of leaves.

IN wildlife When sown with seeds, bananas grow in height very quickly: in almost 9-10 months of the warm season, their false stems can grow up to 8 meters in height. Then comes the reproductive phase, during which new leaves are no longer produced.

Inside the trunk, the development of a peduncle begins, which in 2-3 weeks forms a large inflorescence in the form of a dark purple bud. At its base there are small bananas, which form fruits in the future, arranged in dense large clusters in a spiral running from the base of the inflorescence to its top. Flowers are divided into female (above), bisexual or hermaphrodite (below) and male (small, located below).

Pollination of female flowers in nature occurs with the help of several types of living creatures that come to the specific smell of inflorescences:

sunbirds;
tupai - animals similar to squirrels;
insects - bees, wasps, butterflies;
bats at night.

After pollination, a cluster of fruits ripens, which in appearance resembles a brush with numerous fingers. When wild bananas ripen, they immediately become prey for animals and birds that come to eat them. After each cycle is completed, the false stem of the plant dies, allowing the next growth to begin.

Wild banana fruits have many “seeds” (50-200 pieces), similar in shape and size to cherry ones. With their help, bananas reproduce. These seeds fall into the soil in a litter of rotted leaves. After 2 months, green shoots appear from them and the next plant growth cycle begins.

Varieties of varieties

Bananas are one of the most ancient cultivated tropical plants, which were cultivated by humans starting from the 4th-6th centuries. BC Now this crop is grown in many countries of the world where there is a humid tropical climate and where they are well aware of how bananas reproduce.

Most cultivated species were obtained by scientists as a result breeding work and crossings of wild varieties “pointed banana” and “Balbis banana”, widespread in India.

Cultivated varieties of bananas do not have seeds and are divided into 2 main groups:

banana - sweet yellow fruit that can be eaten raw;
plantain (plantains) - fruits with a starchy core, used for culinary processing (they can be baked in leaves, boiled, etc.).

Edible varieties

The most popular types and varieties of bananas (their description and cultivation are presented below) that are cultivated on plantations:

Cavendish - a dessert variety called dwarf, sugar or Canary - grows in a cluster of fruits, when ripe it becomes covered with small brown spots;
Banana of the Sages is the most popular variety in tropical countries;
Gros Michel - has large fruits of yellow-cream color, sweet and aromatic, tolerates transportation well;
Lakatan - highly resistant to diseases;
Lady Finger - thick fruits with a pleasant taste and delicate pulp, but do not tolerate transportation well;
Red Dhaka - almost straight in shape and elongated, up to 9 pieces in a brush, tasty;
Paradise banana is a mealy variety, the fruits of which are boiled and baked, and unripe fruits are made into flour (starch content is 66%).

Vegetable or garden varieties: Banana of the Sages, Indian (plant height up to 10 m), Chinese, Dwarf Cavendish (2 m). Fibrous varieties for fiber production: Textile and Basio banana.

How bananas grow on plantations

The banana plant has a structure characteristic of herbaceous species: powerful roots, a main stem on which there are huge leaves ranging from 6 to 20 pieces. After bamboo, the banana plant is the 2nd tallest plant in the world.

On plantations, bananas can grow with a stem thickness of up to 40 cm and a height of up to 8 m. Their leaves, 50 cm wide, reach 3 m in length, and they begin to grow not on branches, but from the depths of the hollow trunk, which is characteristic feature herbaceous plants. Having reached a certain height, the leaves begin to bend downwards from their own weight.

The powerful root system can be buried in the ground to a depth of up to 1.5 m and a width of up to 5 m in all directions. Each rhizome can live from 2 to 5 years, producing new shoots every six months. Characteristic feature The structure of the leaves is a long longitudinal vein located in the center of the plate. The color depends on the plant variety and can be either green or with spots of burgundy or crimson.

The fruits grow in clusters, each containing up to 100 pieces. bananas Maximum productivity on plantations is achieved with high air humidity. Some areas even use wrapping ripening bunches in a layer of polyethylene to increase humidity and speed up fruit ripening. However, this threatens the rapid emergence of fungal infections and diseases.

In which countries do bananas grow and how do they reproduce?

In the 21st century, more than 42 million tons of bananas are grown annually in the world in 107 countries, of which 2/3 are in Latin America. The largest plantations are located in Ecuador (7 million tons annually), Brazil (6.9), in Asia - in China (10.9) and India (24.9). Bananas grow on African continent, where Tanzania leads the way, producing 2.5 million tons per year.

This plant can also be grown in cooler, non-tropical climates. In addition to tasty fruits that are used as food, bananas in some countries are used to make ropes, and the stems are used to feed livestock. In Russia and European countries, people prefer to eat the fruits raw, but on other continents, where a lot of them are produced, bananas are used to make wine and chips, brew beer, and also create raw materials for tea bags.

The plant can be propagated in 2 ways: by seeds or shoots (vegetatively). On plantations in Latin America, Spain, China and India, sprouts are used for propagation and planting of new plants. They appear from the rhizomes of adult bananas after the aerial parts die off.

The way bananas are propagated on plantations is vegetative. It is the most reliable and fastest. For propagation, the strongest offspring are selected, as well as parts of tubers (rhisomes), cutting them. The most productive and persistent shoots are formed during the fruiting period, because they accumulate the maximum amount of useful substances.

Growing bananas at home

Back in the Victorian era, banana plants occupied pride of place in winter greenhouses in Europe, and in the 21st century, the popularity of growing them at home or winter garden returns.

As house plant They use specially created decorative varieties of bananas. When planting crops, it should be taken into account that in nature they love sunny, warm places with high air humidity, i.e. in apartment conditions they need frequent spraying.

The plant loves abundant watering, i.e. the soil should always be moistened, preferably a slightly acidic or neutral, loose and nutritious environment. When planting in a tub, you should prepare in advance a soil mixture consisting of humus, leaves, turf and sand in a ratio of 2:1:2:2.

The optimal temperature for growing all year round should be within +22…+25°C. Such conditions are quite difficult to reproduce in an apartment, which is why it is necessary to grow exotic plant Many gardeners fail. Positive results are obtained by growing plants in a greenhouse, but provided that the air temperature does not fall below +16°C.

Abundant watering of planted plants should be carried out regularly all year round, as well as spraying the leaves and air around with warm water. It is recommended to place a tray or container with wet pebbles next to the banana.

The plant also responds well to the use of mineral fertilizers, which should be applied monthly. IN summer period It is recommended to fertilize the soil with slurry.

Planting Banana Seeds

One way to propagate bananas at home is to sow store-bought seeds of ornamental varieties of the plant.

Preparation and actions when planting a banana:

scarify the seeds using sandpaper (rub to enhance swelling);
soak the seeds for 2 days in warm water;
plant in the ground;
maintain humidity and temperature +25…+30°С.

They usually take a long time to germinate - 3-4 months. But after the sprout appears above the surface, it immediately begins to grow, surprising the owner with its speed of development. However, you should be aware that the seeds of wild banana varieties that have grown into an adult plant produce inedible fruits.

For growing at home, decorative banana varieties are used: Paradise, Japanese, Manna and Wise bananas. They are distinguished by their short stature (2-3 m) and greater unpretentiousness compared to varieties growing in open ground. Experienced flower growers It is recommended to plant Cavendish banana (also known as dwarf or Chinese), which grows up to 1 m high.

Flower growers grow such varieties only for decorative purposes, because... their fruits are still inedible, and the plant usually dies after fruiting.

Decorative varieties and method of A. Patiya

One of the ways to grow a banana at home is the method of the Ukrainian amateur breeder A. Patiya. In 1998, he created high-quality fruit-bearing varieties of fruits, which were named “Kiev Dwarf” and “Super Dwarf”. These varieties have increased resistance to cold and disease. They are able to bloom at a temperature of +15°C.

a young banana plant (up to 20 cm in height) should be planted in a pot with a capacity of up to 3 liters, with a height of 50-70 cm - in a large container with a capacity of 15-20 liters;
When replanting, you should use deciduous soil: add 1 liter of humus (vermicompost), 2 liters of river sand, 500 g of ash or wood ash to a bucket of soil.

The scientist recommends watering the tree only after the top layer of soil has dried, so that the roots do not rot, with warm, settled water (+25...+30°C). IN winter months Bananas are watered less often. In summer, it is better to take the plant out onto the balcony or into shady place in the garden.

Fertilizers should be applied many times:

in winter - monthly;
in spring and summer - weekly “feed” with green manure fertilizers (pour boiling water over chopped green grass in a ratio of 1:5 and leave for 24 hours), vermicompost, ash (alternately), adding them to the moist soil;
To enhance fruiting, it is recommended to water with fish broth made from 200 g of waste or small unsalted fish in 2 liters of water (boil for 30 minutes, strain, dilute with water in equal proportions and mix with vermicompost).

Plants grow up to 1.5-1.7 m, and fruits ripen in bunches of bananas measuring up to 15 cm in length and weighing 150 g. These varieties can be kept in an apartment or house.

Diseases and pests

Like any plant, bananas can get sick and be damaged by pests. The most common of them:

small beetles, larvae, which are called nematodes - they penetrate into the middle of the stems and begin to gnaw them;
black weevils - crawl into the base of the stem, gnawing passages from which juice begins to flow in the form of jelly;
Due to the lack of renewal of the plant gene pool, cultivated varieties have low resistance to fungal diseases.

To combat pests, you can use special plant disinfectants. For prevention, you should not forget to moisten the soil. If the plantations are severely damaged, the infected plants must be destroyed.

In most countries of the world, these fruits are consumed only for food. Moreover, the African country of Burundi is the leader in the number of bananas consumed per person, where each resident annually eats 190 kg of the tasty yellow fruit. Bananas are eaten slightly less in Samoa, Ecuador and the Comoros Islands. In Russia, per person there is a little more than 7 kg of these fruits.

Banana is a high-calorie product and ranks 4th in terms of volume of products grown after rice, wheat and corn. In terms of the number of fruits purchased, the United States is in first place ($2.5 billion), followed by European countries and Canada.

Recently, breeders developed an original variety of banana that has a strawberry flavor.

The only disadvantage when growing it is the duration of plant growth before harvest (at least 8 months).

The banana plant is a great addition to the collection of ornamental plants growing in the home. Knowing the methods and conditions for how bananas reproduce, many gardeners will want to plant and maintain them at home.

Origin of the word "banana".

Despite the fact that in appearance the banana resembles a tree, in fact the banana is a herb, namely herbaceous plant with powerful roots, a short stem that does not reach the surface, and 6-20 large sheets. After bamboo, banana is the most tall grass in the world. The banana fruit is a berry.

Trunk and roots.

Banana leaves.

How does a banana bloom?

Pollination of female flowers occurs at night, and in the morning and day by small mammals or birds. As banana fruits develop, they resemble a hand with many fingers growing on it.

Sometimes a banana is called a banana palm, which is incorrect, since it belongs to the palm family this plant doesn't belong. The banana is a fairly tall plant, so it is not surprising that many people mistake it for a tree. The Greeks and Romans spoke of it as “the wonderful Indian fruit tree” - hence, by analogy with other fruit trees of the region, the expression “banana palm” spread.

Where do bananas grow?

How many calories are in a banana?

Data per 100 grams of product:

proteins in banana – 1.5 g (~6 kcal);
fats in banana – 0.5 g (~5 kcal);
carbohydrates in a banana – 21 g (~84 kcal).

So what are bananas good for?

Banana peels are used as fertilizer for both indoor and outdoor flowers. The fact is that it contains a large amount of phosphorus and potassium. With the help of banana peels you can also fight against those who do not tolerate excess potassium. To do this, you just need to make a tincture on banana skins and water the plants with it. The easiest way to use banana peels to fertilize flowers is to simply bury them in the ground. To do this, just cut the peel into small pieces. After this procedure, even the most tired plants begin to leaf out and bloom. Banana peels take 10 days to decompose in the ground, after which bacteria eat them.

Plantains (platano);
Dessert bananas.

Decorative bananas.

Pointed banana (lat.Musaacuminata)

Musaitinerans) grows in height from 2.5 to 4 meters. The banana trunk is painted in an unusual violet-green color with a silver-white coating. The color of the leaf blades is bright green, and their length on average reaches 0.7 meters. The thick skin of banana fruits is blue or purple in color. The fruits of this banana are unsuitable for food. Except decorative value, blue banana is used as one of the components of the Asian diet. Banana grows in the following countries: China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos. This plant can also be grown in a pot.

Musavelutina)

Musacoccinea) is a representative of low-growing plants. Its height rarely exceeds one meter. The shiny surface of the narrow, bright green banana leaves emphasizes the beauty of the inflorescences, which are juicy scarlet or red in color. The flowering period of banana lasts about 2 months. Grown as ornamental plant to get beautiful orange-red flowers. The homeland of the Indochinese banana is Southeast Asia.

Darjeeling banana (lat.Musa sikkimensis)

Japanese banana, Basho banana or – a cold-resistant species, reaching a height of 2.5 meters. The surface of the banana false trunk is colored in greenish or yellowish shades and covered with a thin wax-like layer, on which black spots are visible. The length of the leaf blades does not exceed 1.5 meters in length and 60 centimeters in width. The color of banana leaves varies from rich dark green at the base of the leaf to pale green at the tip. The Japanese banana grows in Japan, as well as in Russia on the Black Sea coast. It is inedible and is grown mainly for its fiber, which is used for the production of clothing, screens, and book bindings.

Musatextilis)

Banana is a large plant with a false stem height of up to 8 meters and a diameter at the base of more than 30 centimeters. Its color varies from green to yellow-green. The length of banana leaves can exceed 3 meters with a width of about 50-60 centimeters. The leaf sheaths are colored bluish and are often covered with fine hairs. The fruit sizes reach 10 centimeters in length and 4 cm in width. Banana skin color changes with age from light yellow to dark brown or black. Banana fruits are used as food for. Unripe fruits are canned. The male flower buds are eaten as a vegetable. The Balbis banana grows in India, Sri Lanka and the Malay Archipelago.

Platano (plantains).

– a herbaceous plant of medium height, resistant to cold. Sycamore fruits are 13-15 cm long, enclosed in a triangular peel. The pulp is dense, with a lemon flavor, and is edible raw only when overripe, so the variety is usually fried or baked.

- a plant with large fruits up to 20 cm in length. The peel is greenish in color, slightly rough to the touch, thick. In its raw form it is inedible due to its strongly astringent taste, but is perfect for preparing all kinds of dishes: chips, vegetable stew, puree. This type of plane tree grows in India, where it is in unprecedented demand among buyers in ordinary fruit shops.

Since childhood, we are accustomed to thinking that bananas grow on palm trees. But it turns out that banana is a herb. Of course, not the kind that grows on lawns, but a giant one, reaching a height of 5-6 to 15 m.
Grass, that is! It is difficult for a resident of central Russia, accustomed to bending over to look for strawberries and lingonberries in the forest, to imagine a banana grass three to four meters high, on the stem of which hang three hundred “berries” weighing half a centner. In addition, the diameter of the “grass” is a good ten centimeters. At the top it ends in a spreading panicle of oblong leaves (which is why the European reaction is unambiguous: palm tree). Something like a one and a half meter long trunk hangs from a rosette of leaves from top to bottom.
Bananas not only have a trunk (like trees) - they don’t even have a normal stem. Its stem is more like a tuber and is almost invisible above the ground. But there are huge leaves - fans, up to 6 m long and up to a meter wide.

250-300 small bananas are tied to the inflorescence. The trunk is correctly called a “bunch,” and what we buy and call clusters are actually clusters of four to seven fused fruits. A real banana bunch is a lot of bunches, closely adjacent to each other. Bananas have been known to mankind since ancient times.

Their homeland is called the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, mainly India and China. At least in these countries, bananas have long been considered sacred fruits that restore strength and nourish the mind. Some Indian pagodas that have survived from those times have roofs that exactly follow the shape of a banana: this is how it was respected. From India and China, banana culture spread to Asia Minor.

Later they began to be grown on the east and west coasts of Africa. In the 16th century, they were brought to the Canary Islands, Central and South America. The countries there are the last to have banana plantations in the world, and they are the best at growing and selling them: Ecuador, Colombia, Panama supply the whole of Europe with bananas. If before we ate - it’s clear why - exclusively Cuban varieties, now we are also full-fledged Europeans: most of all Ecuadorian fruits are on our market.

A few words about how bananas are harvested. As soon as the ovaries on the bunch begin to form, a plastic cover is urgently pulled over it so that, God forbid, nothing gets on the ripening fruits. So they grow under hoods, protected from tropical insect pests, for eleven weeks. They don’t reach full ripeness, but they should be taken to another continent!

At this stage the harvest time comes. Nothing has changed over the centuries: the same way our great-grandfathers and grandfathers collected the harvest is the same way they do it now. A worker, holding a long pole with a powerful cleaver screwed to the end, approaches the trunk and, deftly baling it high, cuts off a huge bunch. And how it will rustle down... (I see that our people, who give the weekend to six hundred square meters, have already shuddered: if an apple or a pear falls, it’s a pity that it will remain! And here fifty kilograms of banana tenderness crash to the ground?!)

So they were scared in vain - centuries-old experience teaches: there is no better landing place for the bunch than the shoulders and back of the second worker, specially standing nearby. Having cheerfully depreciated, he drags the harvest to the warehouse on himself. There, the bunches will be disassembled into small parts, thrown into tanks with a special liquid for greater disinfection and long-term preservation, and then caught, dried, wrapped in plastic, packed in branded boxes, and they will travel by sea, rarely by plane, to other countries. And the “trunk” from which the bunch was cut is no longer alive. Dries up.

Grass is grass. But from the rhizome, new “blades of grass” are already climbing out of the ground into the light of God. True, they take a whole year to grow to maturity. And they will also bring only one bunch each, but the process of renewal on the plantations is continuous. How continuous the harvest is in a warm climate: some bunches are cut, others are ripening, others are setting... In a word, long live the eternal tropical summer! And may bananas not disappear on our table!

At night, banana flowers are visited by bats, and during the day they are visited by numerous insects, sunbirds and squirrel-like animals - tupayas, which are distant relatives of monkeys. Bananas generously treat all visitors with nectar. After pollination, the covering leaves fall off and fruits begin to set in place of the flowers. There are so many lateral inflorescences on one peduncle that when the last covering leaves begin to open at its end, the fruits at the base are already ripe.

The yellow, crescent-shaped fruit of the banana bears little resemblance to a berry*, but from a botanist's point of view, a banana is a berry with a leathery shell and sweet pulp, in which numerous seeds are embedded (if you cut a banana, you can see small black dots inside).

It must be said that not all types of bananas have the same fruits that we can buy in our markets and stores. Some fruits are shorter, some are oval or almost round, some are longer and thinner. When ripe, the peel sometimes turns red rather than yellow. But such bananas are not delivered to us - they do not tolerate transportation well.

After fruiting, the entire huge above-ground part of the plant dies off, but from the base of the false stem, underground shoots have already begun to grow, which will give rise to new false stems. This is how bananas reproduce vegetatively.

Green bananas have the consistency of potatoes, but they taste very astringent and resinous—completely inedible. Bananas are harvested by completely cutting down a thick grassy trunk, with one blow of a sickle - the second time the same shoot (what is incorrectly called a palm tree in Russia) does not bear fruit. Then the bunch is cut off from the trunk and left to ripen. A few days after harvesting, green bananas ripen and become our usual yellow. The sale of green bananas is widespread.

The banana came to us from Malaysia, where it has been grown for 10 thousand years. Wild bananas, which can still be found in Southeast Asia, contain large, hard seeds and very little pulp. They are pollinated by bats.

Your supermarket banana is a cultivar chosen by planters for its fleshy flesh and lack of seeds. Cultivation produced a plant that is sweet, tasty, but sterile: such a banana is not able to reproduce without human help.

Most banana plants have not had “sex” for 10 thousand years. Almost every banana that we eat with such pleasure is propagated by hand: from the shoot of an already existing plant, whose genetic fund has not been updated for 100 centuries. As a result, bananas are extremely susceptible to various types of diseases. Many of its species have already fallen victim to fungal infections such as black sigatoka and Panama disease, which are very resistant to fungicides. And if a genetically modified variety is not developed soon, we may forget about bananas forever.

The problem, by the way, is very serious. Bananas are the world's most profitable export crop. The industry is worth $12 billion a year and supports 400 million people, many of whom live below the poverty line.

Most bananas come from hot countries, but, paradoxically, the largest European manufacturer bananas is Iceland. Bananas are grown in spacious greenhouses heated by geothermal waters, just two degrees south of the Arctic Circle.
Fyffe's, a multinational importing company that annually purchases the entire banana harvest from Belize, is Irish.

With the same weight, dried bananas contain 5 times more calories than fresh ones.
India produces more bananas than any other country in the world.
Sprinter Linford Christie, an Olympic gold medalist, includes fried plantain in his diet before competitions or training.

In East Africa, bananas are fermented and beer is made from them.

Banana fruits are consumed raw, fried, or boiled. Bananas are used to prepare soups, baked goods, desserts, and main courses. But special varieties of bananas are fried and boiled. The bananas we eat are bred through crossbreeding. different types bananas
Bananas are not only eaten as food. Banana peels are used to make black dye; leaves are used for baking, instead of foil and baking paper; light buildings and rafts are made from stems; The leaves are used to make packages.

33 chose

This is exactly the question that came to me from one of our readers. True, she asked not to use her name, because this question seems “too childish” to her. I think this is a very interesting question!

First, let me remind you: bananas do not grow on palm trees. Bananas – this is grass. One of the highest in the world, by the way. Secondly, there are about 500 varieties!

So bananas are very, very different. And in size, and in color, and, of course, in taste. By the way, there are bananas that are generally inedible. For example, Japanese banana And textile banana. Yes, yes, they also make clothes from bananas!

But those bananas that you and I eat (and almost all varieties!) are generally fiction. They do not exist in nature. This various varieties sterile artificially bred banana of paradise, which is not found in the wild. It is precisely because this banana is sterile that many people think that the banana reproduces vegetatively: “either by shoots or something else.” So my friends were very surprised and did not believe me when I told them about bananas with seeds.

I’m revealing a secret (although what a secret it is, any botanist knows about it): wild bananas have seeds! Moreover, there are so many of them that there may be practically no pulp in a banana fruit.

Look, this is a fruit wild banana in section:

But bananas have been cultivated for so long (the first mentions of them are to the V-VI centuries BC. e., and the islands of the Malay Archipelago are considered their homeland), that cunning humanity has learned to grow seedless bananas.

By the way, as a food crop, banana ranks fourth place in the world by popularity. Only rice, wheat and corn are grown in larger quantities. And what types of bananas are eaten in? They are eaten raw, boiled, fried, desserts and pastries, soups and main courses are prepared from them... There is only one thing: those bananas that can be found on the shelves of European stores cannot be fried or boiled. That is, of course you can try. Some desserts can even be made with fried bananas, but this has nothing to do with the version of fried bananas of the peoples of Africa and Asia. Because special varieties are fried here; they are green, hard and, when raw, more like potatoes with a slight sweetish aftertaste.

However, bananas are used not only for food. Dyes are made from bananas (black, from banana peels), the leaves are also used to prepare various foods (similar to foil or baking paper), packaging is often made from the leaves, and rafts and light buildings are made from the stems. Bananas have also found their place in medicine: the fruits help fight anemia, high blood pressure, depression, heartburn and PMS; the flowers are used in the treatment of dysentery, stomach ulcers, bronchitis and brewed for diabetes... The rest of the plant is also used in medical purposes. For example, young banana leaves are excellent for healing burns.

I hope I was able to answer the question in some detail, and now some more photos that answer the question “how bananas grow.” Especially for you, I took these photos in Cambodia and Botanical Garden Singapore.

So bananas grow like this...

We all, or many of us, love bananas and eat them with pleasure. But no one knows what it is. Some people believe that a banana is a berry, others that a banana is a fruit. But not everyone can answer the question - is a banana a grass or a tree?
What plays a cruel joke on us is that we see in cartoons and films where a monkey climbs a palm tree and eats bananas. And therefore we believe that they grow on palm trees, which means a banana is a tree. No matter how it is!

In fact, the banana we love so much is a herb, that is, the fruit of a herbaceous plant. Despite the fact that it is called a “banana tree”, it has nothing in common with trees. In fact, it is a large pile of leaves, on top of which there is something similar to a palm tree. flower bud grows in a stem that is located right in the middle of these leaves. Another thing is that this grass can grow to quite large sizes, and therefore many people confuse the bush with a palm tree. This is probably the largest plant in the world.

Now let's figure it out: a banana is a berry or fruit. It turns out that banana is a berry. It originated in Southeast Asia and arrived in India thousands of years ago. It is, in fact, one of the oldest fruits known to mankind. Wild banana varieties, found in Malaysia and Southeast Asia, contain large, hard seeds combined with very little pulp. This berry is eaten not only raw, but also boiled, fried, boiled, and even wine is made from it.
By the way, the word “banana” itself is of African origin and is most likely related to the Arabic word “banana”, which means “finger” or “fingers”.

Banana (lat. Musa) is a perennial herbaceous plant that belongs to the flowering department, monocot class, ginger family, banana family, banana genus.

Origin of the word "banana".

There is no exact information about the origin of the Latin definition Musa. Some researchers believe that the banana was named in memory of the court physician Antonio Musa, who served in the service of Octavian Augustus, the Roman emperor who ruled in the last decades BC. e and the first years of our era. According to another theory, it comes from the Arabic word “موز‎”, which sounds like “muz” - the name of the edible fruits produced on this plant. The concept of “banana” passed into the Russian language as a free transliteration of the word “banana” from the dictionaries of almost all European languages. Apparently, this definition was borrowed by Spanish or Portuguese sailors at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries from the vocabulary of tribes living in West Africa.

Banana - description, structure, characteristics and photographs.

Despite the fact that in appearance the banana resembles a tree, in fact the banana is a herb, namely a herbaceous plant with powerful roots, a short stem that does not reach the surface, and 6-20 large leaves. After bamboo, banana is the tallest grass in the world. The banana fruit is a berry.

Trunk and roots.

Numerous fibrous roots forming root system, can spread out to the sides up to 5 meters and go deeper in search of moisture up to 1.5 meters. The false banana trunk, reaching a height of 2 to 12 meters and having a diameter of up to 40 cm, has dense and long leaves, layered on top of each other.

Banana leaves.

Banana leaves have an oblong or oval shape, their length can exceed 3 meters and their width can reach 1 meter. One large longitudinal vein clearly appears on their surface, from which many small perpendicular veins extend. The colors of banana leaves are varied. Depending on the species or variety, it may be completely green, with dark burgundy spots various shapes or two-tone - painted in crimson shades below and rich green tones above. As the banana matures, the old leaves die and fall to the ground, and the young ones develop inside the false trunk. Renewal rate of one banana leaf at favorable conditions happens in 7 days.

How does a banana bloom?

Active growth of bananas lasts from 8 to 10 months, after which the flowering phase begins. At this time, a long peduncle grows from an underground tuberous stem up through the entire trunk. Having made its way out, it forms a complex inflorescence, which in its shape resembles a kind of large bud, colored in purple or green shades. At its base there are banana flowers in tiers. At the very top there are large female flowers that form fruits; below that grow medium-sized bisexual banana flowers, and even lower are small male flowers that have the smallest sizes.

Regardless of size, a banana flower consists of 3 tubular petals with 3 sepals. Most bananas have white petals, the leaves that cover them are purple on the outside and dark red on the inside. Depending on the type or variety of banana, there are two types of inflorescences: erect and drooping.

At night, pollination of female flowers occurs by bats, and in the morning and day by small mammals or birds. As banana fruits develop, they resemble a hand with many fingers growing on it.

At its core, the banana fruit is a berry. Its appearance depends on the species and variety. It can be oblong cylindrical or triangular shape and have a length from 3 to 40 centimeters. Banana skin color can be green, yellow, red and silvery. As it ripens, the hard flesh becomes soft and juicy. About 300 fruits with a total weight of up to 70 kg can develop from one inflorescence. Banana flesh is cream, white, orange or yellow. Banana seeds can be found in wild fruits, but are almost completely absent from cultivated species. After fruiting is completed, the false stem of the plant dies, and a new one grows in its place.

Banana palm and banana tree. Do bananas grow on palm trees?

Sometimes a banana is called a banana palm, which is incorrect, since this plant does not belong to the palm family. The banana is a fairly tall plant, so it is not surprising that many people mistake it for a tree. The Greeks and Romans spoke of it as “the wonderful Indian fruit tree” - hence, by analogy with other fruit trees of the region, the expression “banana palm” spread.

The phrase “banana tree,” which is sometimes called a banana, actually refers to plants from the genus Asimina, family Annonaceae, and is associated with the similarity of the fruits of these trees with the fruits of a banana.

A banana is not a fruit, a tree, or a palm tree. In fact, a banana is a herb (herbaceous plant), and the banana fruit is a berry!

Where do bananas grow?

Bananas grow in countries of the tropical and subtropical zone: in South Asia, Latin America, Malaysia, northeastern Australia, and also on some islands of Japan. The banana plant is grown on an industrial scale in Bhutan and Pakistan, China and India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, the Maldives and Nepal, Thailand and Brazil. In Russia, bananas grow in natural conditions near Sochi, however, due to the fact that winter temperatures often fall below zero degrees, the fruits do not ripen. Moreover, under prolonged unfavorable conditions, some plants may die.

Banana composition, vitamins and minerals. What are the benefits of bananas?

Bananas are considered low-fat, but quite nutritious and energy-rich foods. The pulp of its raw fruits consists of a quarter of carbohydrates and sugars, and a third of dry substances. It contains starch, fiber, pectin, proteins and various essential oils, giving the fruits a characteristic aroma. Banana pulp contains minerals and vitamins that are useful and necessary for the human body: potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, iron, sodium, copper, zinc, as well as vitamins B, E, C and PP. Thanks to the unique chemical composition The plant has found application in medicine.

How many calories are in a banana?

Data per 100 grams of product:

calorie content of green banana – 89 kcal;
calorie content of a ripe banana – 110-120 kcal;
calorie content of an overripe banana – 170-180 kcal;
calorie content of dried banana – 320 kcal.

Since bananas vary in size, the calorie content of 1 banana varies between 70-135 kilocalories:

1 small banana weighing up to 80 g and up to 15 cm long contains approximately 72 kcal;
1 medium banana weighing up to 117 g and more than 18 cm long contains approximately 105 kcal;
1 large banana weighing more than 150 g and more than 22 cm long contains about 135 kcal.

Energy value of a ripe banana (ratio of proteins, fats, carbohydrates) (data per 100 g):

proteins in banana - 1.5 g (~6 kcal);
fats in banana - 0.5 g (~5 kcal);
carbohydrates in a banana - 21 g (~84 kcal).

It is important to note that bananas do not cope well with hunger, increasing it after a short-term satiety. The reason lies in the significant sugar content, which rises in the blood and after a while increases appetite.

Beneficial properties of banana. Use of bananas.

So what are bananas good for?

Banana pulp is used to relieve inflammatory processes occurring in the oral cavity, and also as a dietary product in the treatment of stomach and duodenal ulcers. In addition, banana is a laxative and is therefore used as a mild laxative. Due to the presence of tryptophan, an amino acid that prevents cell aging and has a beneficial effect on brain function, bananas are recommended for consumption by older people. The presence of potassium and magnesium allows them to be used as a means of preventing high blood pressure and stroke.
Banana flower infusion helps in the treatment of diabetes and bronchitis. The juice obtained from banana stems is a good anticonvulsant and sedative.
The invaluable benefits of bananas are concentrated in the peel. Banana skins are used for medicinal purposes. Compresses from young leaves or banana peels promote rapid healing of burns and abscesses on the skin.
Banana peels are used as fertilizer for both indoor and outdoor flowers. The fact is that it contains a large amount of phosphorus and potassium. Using banana peels you can also fight aphids, which cannot tolerate excess potassium. To do this, you just need to make a tincture on banana skins and water the plants with it. The easiest way to use banana peels to fertilize flowers is to simply bury them in the ground. To do this, just cut the peel into small pieces. After this procedure, even the most tired plants begin to leaf out and bloom. Banana peels take 10 days to decompose in the ground, after which bacteria eat them.
The benefits of bananas are invaluable: even overripe bananas produce a very powerful antioxidant that prevents cancer.

Residents of countries located in temperate latitudes enjoy eating raw peeled bananas as dessert, adding them to ice cream and confectionery. Some people prefer dried and canned bananas. This berry is also fried and boiled with or without the peel, adding salt, hot spices, olive oil, onion or garlic. Bananas can be used to make flour, chips, syrup, marmalade, honey and wine. In addition to the fruit, banana inflorescences are also eaten: raw inflorescences are dipped in sauce, and boiled ones are added to gravies or soups. Starch is prepared from unripe banana fruits. Boiled waste from vegetable and dessert bananas is used as feed for large and small livestock.

The fruits and other parts of the banana are used:

in the leather industry as a black dye;
in the textile industry for the production of fabrics;
for the production of especially strong marine ropes and ropes;
in the construction of rafts and the manufacture of seat cushions;
as plates and trays for serving traditional South Asian dishes in India and Sri Lanka.

Bananas: contraindications and harm.

It is not advisable to eat bananas before bed, or combine them with milk, so as not to provoke fermentation in the stomach and cause intestinal dysfunction.
People suffering from diabetes are not allowed to eat bananas because they contain little glucose and fructose, but a lot of sugar.
Bananas can cause harm to people who suffer from thrombophlebitis, as these berries help thicken the blood.

Types and varieties of bananas, names and photographs.

The genus includes about 70 species of bananas, which, depending on their use, are divided into 3 varieties:

Decorative bananas (inedible);
Plantains (platano);
Dessert bananas.

Decorative bananas.

This group includes plants with very beautiful flowers and mostly inedible fruits. They can be wild or grown for beauty. Inedible bananas are also used to make various textile products, pillows for car seats and fishing nets. The most famous types of decorative bananas are:

Pointed banana (lat.Musaacuminata) grown due to beautiful leaves up to one meter long with a large central vein and many small ones, along which the leaf blade divides over time, acquiring a resemblance to a bird’s feather. The leaves of the ornamental banana are dark green; specimens with a reddish tint are often found. In greenhouse conditions, the height of a pointed banana plant can reach 3.5 meters, although in room conditions it grows no more than 2 meters. The size of the fruits of this type of banana ranges from 5 to 30 centimeters, and their color can be green, yellow and even red. The pointed banana is edible and grows in Southeast Asia, southern China, India and Australia. In countries with colder climates, this type of banana is grown as an ornamental plant.

Blue Burmese banana (lat.Musaitinerans) grows in height from 2.5 to 4 meters. The banana trunk is painted in an unusual violet-green color with a silver-white coating. The color of the leaf blades is bright green, and their length on average reaches 0.7 meters. The thick skin of banana fruits is blue or purple in color. The fruits of this banana are unsuitable for food. In addition to its decorative value, blue banana is used as one of the components of the diet of Asian elephants. Banana grows in the following countries: China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos. This plant can also be grown in a pot.

Velvet banana (velvety, purple, pink) (lat.Musavelutina) has a false trunk height of no more than 1.5 meters with a diameter of about 7 centimeters. Banana leaves, colored light green, grow up to 1 meter long and 30 centimeters wide. Many specimens have a red edge along the edge of the leaf blade. The petals of the inflorescences, pleasing with their appearance for up to six months, are painted purple-pink. The pink banana peel is quite thick, and their number in a bunch does not exceed 9 pieces. The length of the fruit is 8 cm. When ripe, the skin of the fruit opens, revealing light pulp with seeds inside.

This variety of banana is used for decorative purposes. Can survive a not very cold winter. This banana is also unique in that it will bloom and bear fruit freely almost all year round at home.

Banana bright red (Indochinese banana) (lat.Musacoccinea) is a representative of low-growing plants. Its height rarely exceeds one meter. The shiny surface of the narrow, bright green banana leaves emphasizes the beauty of the inflorescences, which are juicy scarlet or red in color. The flowering period of banana lasts about 2 months. Grown as an ornamental plant to produce beautiful orange-red flowers. The homeland of the Indochinese banana is Southeast Asia.

Darjeeling banana (lat.Musa sikkimensis) grows up to 5.5 meters in height with a false trunk diameter at the base of about 45 cm. The color of this decorative banana can have a red tint. The length of the gray-green leaves with purple veins often exceeds 1.5-2 meters. Some varieties of Darjeeling banana have red leaf blades. Banana fruits are medium-sized, up to 13 cm in length, with a slightly sweet taste. This species is quite frost-resistant and can withstand temperatures down to -20 degrees. Bananas are grown in many European countries.

Japanese banana, Basho banana or Japanese textile banana (lat. Musa basjoo)- a cold-resistant species, reaching a height of 2.5 meters. The surface of the banana false trunk is colored in greenish or yellowish shades and covered with a thin wax-like layer, on which black spots are visible. The length of the leaf blades does not exceed 1.5 meters in length and 60 centimeters in width. The color of banana leaves varies from rich dark green at the base of the leaf to pale green at the tip. The Japanese banana grows in Japan, as well as in Russia on the Black Sea coast. It is inedible and is grown mainly for its fiber, which is used for the production of clothing, screens, and book bindings.

Textile banana, abaca (lat.Musatextilis) grown to make strong fibers from leaf sheaths. The height of the false trunk does not exceed 3.5 meters, and the diameter is 20 cm. Narrow green leaves rarely reach a length of more than one meter. The fruits, which develop on a drooping raceme, have a triangular appearance and sizes up to 8 centimeters. Inside the pulp there are a large number of small seeds. The color changes from green to straw-yellow as it ripens. Textile banana is grown in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Central American countries to produce durable fiber from which baskets, furniture and other utensils are woven.

Banana Balbis (fruit) (lat. Musa balbisiana) is a large plant with a false stem height of up to 8 meters and a diameter at the base of more than 30 centimeters. Its color varies from green to yellow-green. The length of banana leaves can exceed 3 meters with a width of about 50-60 centimeters. The leaf sheaths are colored bluish and are often covered with fine hairs. The fruit sizes reach 10 centimeters in length and 4 cm in width. Banana skin color changes with age from light yellow to dark brown or black. Banana fruits are used as pig feed. Unripe fruits are canned. The male flower buds are eaten as a vegetable. The Balbis banana grows in India, Sri Lanka and the Malay Archipelago.

Platano (plantains).

Plantain (from the French plantain) or platano (from the Spanish plátano) are quite large bananas, which are mainly (90%) eaten after heat treatment: they are fried in oil, boiled, baked in batter, steamed or cooked of which are chips. The peel of the sycamore tree is also used for food. Although there are types of sycamore that, when fully ripe, become softer, sweeter and edible even without prior heat treatment. The skin color of sycamores can be green or yellow (although they are usually sold greenish); ripe sycamores have a black skin.

Plantains differ from dessert bananas in their thicker skin, as well as in tougher and almost unsweetened pulp with a high starch content. Platano varieties have found application both in the human menu and in agriculture, where they are used as livestock feed. In many countries of the Caribbean, Africa, India and South America, dishes prepared from platano are served as side dishes for meat and fish or as a completely independent dish. They are usually generously seasoned with salt, herbs and hot chili pepper.

Types of sycamore intended for heat treatment are divided into 4 groups, each of which has different varieties:

French sycamores: varieties ‘Obino l’Ewai’ (Nigeria), ‘Nendran’ (India), ‘Dominico’ (Colombia).
French carob-shaped sycamores: varieties ‘Batard’ (Cameroon), ‘Mbang Okon’ (Nigeria).
False carob-shaped sycamores: varieties ‘Agbagda’ and ‘Orishele’ (Nigeria), ‘Dominico-Harton’ (Colombia).
Horn-shaped sycamores: varieties ‘Ishitim’ (Nigeria), ‘Pisang Tandok’ (Malaysia).

Below is a description of several varieties of sycamore:

Ground banana (banana da terra) grows mainly in Brazil. The length of the fruit often reaches 25-27 cm, and the weight is 400-500 grams. The peel is ribbed, thick, and the pulp has orange tint. In its raw form, platano is slightly astringent in taste, but after cooking it acquires excellent flavor characteristics. The leader among platanos in the content of vitamins A and C.

Plantain Burro (Burro, Orinoco, Horse, Hog)- a herbaceous plant of medium height, resistant to cold. Sycamore fruits are 13-15 cm long, enclosed in a triangular peel. The pulp is dense, with a lemon flavor, and is edible raw only when overripe, so the variety is usually fried or baked.

- a plant with large fruits up to 20 cm in length. The peel is greenish in color, slightly rough to the touch, thick. In its raw form it is inedible due to its strongly astringent taste, but is perfect for preparing all kinds of dishes: chips, vegetable stews, mashed potatoes. This type of plane tree grows in India, where it is in unprecedented demand among buyers in ordinary fruit shops.

Dessert bananas.

Dessert varieties of bananas are eaten without heat treatment. In addition, they can be stored for future use by withering or drying. The most famous species of this group is banana of paradise (lat. Musa paradisiaca). It grows up to 7-9 meters in height. The thick, fleshy banana leaves are 2 meters long and are green in color with brown spots. The ripe fruit reaches a size of up to 20 cm with a diameter of about 4-5 cm. Up to 300 banana berries can ripen on one plant, the pulp of which contains practically no seeds.

Almost all species are artificially cultivated. Among them, the following dessert varieties of bananas are widely used:

Banana variety Lady Finger or Lady Finger with a rather thin false trunk reaching a height of 7-7.5 m. These are small bananas, the length of which does not exceed 12 cm. The skin of this banana variety is light yellow with thin red-brown streaks. One bunch of bananas usually contains up to 20 fruits with creamy flesh. Widely cultivated in Australia and also common in Latin America.

up to 8-9 meters high and large fruits that have a thick peel yellow. The size of a banana fruit can reach 27 cm and weigh more than 200 grams. Banana pulp has a delicate creamy consistency. The Gros Michel banana variety tolerates transportation well. Grows in Central America and Central Africa.

Banana variety Dwarf Cavendish(Dwarf Cavendish) - low (1.8-2.4 m) plant with wide leaves. The size of banana fruits varies from 15 to 25 cm. Their ripening is indicated by the bright yellow color of the peel with a small number of small brown spots. It grows in Western and Southern Africa, as well as the Canary Islands.

Banana variety Ice Cream(IceCream, Cenizo, Krie)- a rather tall plant with a false trunk height of up to 4.5 meters and elongated fruits of a four or five-sided shape with dimensions up to 23 cm. The color of the peel of an unripe banana has a bluish-silver tint. As they mature, the color of the skin becomes pale yellow. Grown in Hawaii, the Philippines and Central America.

Banana variety Red Spanish is characterized by an unusual purple-red color not only of the false stem, leaf veins, but also of the peel of an unripe banana. As it ripens, the skin turns orange-yellow. The height of the plant can reach 8.5 meters with a trunk diameter at the base of about 45 cm. The size of the fruit is 12-17 cm. These red bananas grow in Spain.

Growing bananas. How do bananas grow?

The most comfortable conditions for growing bananas are daytime temperatures ranging from 26-35 o C and night temperatures ranging from 22 to 28 o C. When the ambient temperature drops to 10 o C, growth stops completely. Strictly defined humidity has no less influence during the entire life cycle of a plant. Long dry periods can lead to the death of the plant. The best places for organizing banana plantations are fertile acidic soils, rich in micro and macroelements.

To control weeds that interfere with normal growth cultivated plants, use not only herbicides, but also mulching the root zone with finely chopped fallen leaves. Good results are achieved by using geese, which readily eat juicy green weeds, but are absolutely indifferent to bananas. To restore soil fertility, bananas are fed with mineral supplements. Depending on the condition of the soil, nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium fertilizers are used.

From the moment a banana is planted until the end of fruiting, it usually takes from 10 to 19 months. To prevent the plant from breaking due to the weight of the ripening fruits, supports are installed under the hands during banana ripening. Bananas are harvested when the crop is no more than 75% ripe. In this state, it is cooled and transported to the consumer. Ripe bananas stored in a special gas-air mixture at a temperature of no more than 14 o C retain their presentation and taste for 50 days.

Growing bananas at home.

Many types of bananas can be cultivated in a greenhouse or even an apartment. For home grown Low-growing banana varieties with variegated decorative leaves and beautiful flowers are best suited. For the plant to feel comfortable, it needs a special substrate consisting of a mixture universal primer, perlite and finely chopped pine, fir or spruce bark.

Watering a banana.

Homemade banana is very demanding of moisture, but you should not over-water the plant. It is not recommended to place indoor banana near batteries central heating or heating devices. To create the necessary humidity, the leaves and false trunk of the banana are sprayed with a spray bottle. For irrigation, settled water with a temperature of 25 o C is used. Watering must be carried out without allowing the substrate to dry out by more than 3 centimeters. During the winter months, banana watering is limited.

Fertilizer for indoor banana.

To provide homemade banana with microelements, root and leaf feeding is carried out. It is advisable to alternate the use of mineral and organic fertilizers. In any case, you should not feed the plant more than once every 2 weeks. Root loosening of the soil, which provides free access of oxygen to the roots of the plant, has a good effect on the growth of bananas.

Propagation of bananas (vegetative and seeds).

Bananas reproduce:

seeds;
vegetative method.

It is worth noting that the same plant grown using different methods will have different characteristics.

Growing a homemade banana is quite easy. A banana grown from seeds is more viable, but the plant will take a long time to develop and produce inedible fruits. First, banana seeds need to be germinated. To do this, their surface is carefully treated with sandpaper or a nail file (a couple of scratches will be enough) so that the sprout can break through the hard shell. Be careful - there is no need to pierce the seed. Then the seeds are soaked in boiled water for several days until sprouts appear. The water must be changed every 6 hours.

The best container for planting bananas is a shallow pot with a diameter of about 10 centimeters. It is filled with drainage (a layer of expanded clay) 2 cm high and a 1:4 sand-peat mixture 4 cm high. To plant banana seeds, they need to be lightly pressed into the surface of the moistened soil, without covering them with soil. After this, cover the container transparent film or glass and put it in a well-lit place away from direct sun rays. The temperature in the container should be between 27-30 degrees during the day and 25-27 degrees at night. As the substrate dries, it is moistened with a spray bottle. Some gardeners prefer not to remove the film from the container and moisten the substrate through the bottom of the container. If mold appears on the soil, it is necessary to remove it and water the substrate with a solution of potassium permanganate.

The first banana shoots appear after 2-3 months. From this moment, active growth of the plant begins, and after 10 days it can be transplanted into a larger pot. As the banana grows, it needs to be transplanted into a larger pot.

Vegetative propagation of bananas.

A faster and more reliable way to obtain a plant with edible fruits is vegetative propagation. After fruiting ends, the false stem of the banana dies off, and new buds begin to develop from the underground stem to replace it. A new “trunk” grows from one. At this time, you can remove the rhizome from the container and carefully separate the piece with the awakened bud from it. This banana sprout needs to be transplanted into a prepared pot. As the plant grows, it needs to be transplanted into a larger container. It has been established that by the time of fruiting the volume of the pot should be at least 50 liters.

Among the world's agricultural crops, banana ranks fourth in popularity after wheat, rice and corn. The total number of bananas eaten per year by the world's population exceeds 100 billion.
The islands of the Malay Archipelago are the birthplace of the banana. Since ancient times, residents of the archipelago have been growing this berry and eating it along with fish.
The first mention of the plant as edible fruit appeared between the 17th and 11th centuries BC. e. in the Indian written source Rig Veda.
In the collection Ramayana (Indian epic of the 14th century BC), one of the books describes the clothes of the royal family, which were woven from threads obtained from banana leaves.
The Goldfinger banana variety, grown in Australia, has fruits whose structure and taste qualities resembling apples.
If you compare a banana and a potato, it turns out that the calorie content of a potato is one and a half times lower than that of a banana. And raw bananas are almost 5 times less caloric than dried ones. Among the products prepared from this fruit, banana juice is the lowest in calories.

There are few people who don't like bananas. This sweet overseas fruit is on the shelves of our supermarkets all year round, as it ripens quite quickly and the plant has several such cycles throughout the year. Let's find out where bananas grow and how they are grown.

Fruits now come to the expanses of the former USSR mainly from, whereas previously they were brought to us from Cuba, a friendly island state. So the answer to the question, in what natural area The banana grows is obvious - it is cultivated in the tropics, where the climate is quite hot and humid.

But not only these states are producers and suppliers of bananas to the world market. They also include some African states, as well as Latin America (Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Panama).

But India and China grow the most bananas, and this is where bananas are born, where they appeared first. But not all of them are exported, but serve more for personal consumption of the population of these countries. Bananas from Asia are not so easy to find on sale in the European market.

As strange as it may sound, bananas are also grown in the Scandinavian Islands, namely in Iceland. How is this possible in such an uncomfortable climate with a minimum of sunny days and fairly cool temperatures?

It's simple - bananas grow in huge greenhouses, where there are all the conditions for their ripening - bright light, high humidity and temperature. Bananas were introduced back in the 30s of the last century and over time became one of the country’s export destinations.

Do bananas grow in Russia?

Due to the harsh climate of most of the Russian Federation, banana cultivation is not possible here. But this only applies to cultivation under open air. But in a greenhouse, this is quite possible, and some amateurs grow this overseas fruit for fun and have excellent results.

In Sochi, Anapa and Gelendzhik you can also find this plant, but not in a greenhouse, but in the open air. It’s true that we can’t wait for the fruits here – they simply don’t have time to ripen. So bananas grow here only as decoration for landscaping the area.

Do bananas grow on palm trees?

Cartoons often show how bananas are picked from a tall palm tree, topped with bunches and a green crown. But it turns out that these fruits do not grow on trees at all.

It turns out that a banana grows on the grass. Yes, yes, it is a herbaceous plant, but not in the usual sense of the word. This grass is simply enormous in size, reaching 15 meters in height, and the leaf width is about a meter. These are the giants that grow in the tropics.

The plant does not have a stem as such; it is made up of leaves that shoot upward and fit tightly with the stems to each other. There is only one flower from which bananas will then be produced, and when it fades, in its place a huge bunch will form, consisting of 60 or more bananas, which are tightly attached to the base.

Harvest

As soon as the bunch grows, it is packed in a linen or cellophane bag so that it is not damaged by volatiles. mice and large insects. Ripening lasts 11 weeks, and during this time the fruits manage to increase sufficiently in size, but do not yet turn yellow. This will happen later, on the way to the consumer.

When the bananas are ready for harvesting, the workers, and they work trampled underfoot, install a kind of conveyor on the plantation. After this, one tilts the trunk with the fruits and uses a sharp ax to cut down the bunch.

At this time, the task of the second worker is to prevent injury to the bunch - he simply must catch it. After this, bags with banana bunches are hung on hooks and rode on a cable to the place of washing, disinfection and packaging.

Most bananas come from hot countries, but, paradoxically, Iceland is Europe's largest banana producer. Bananas are grown in spacious greenhouses heated by geothermal waters, just two degrees south of the Arctic Circle.
Fyffe's, a multinational importing company that annually purchases the entire banana harvest from Belize, is Irish.

In East Africa, bananas are fermented and beer is made from them.

Banana fruits are consumed raw, fried, or boiled. Bananas are used to prepare soups, baked goods, desserts, and main courses. But special varieties of bananas are fried and boiled. The bananas we eat were developed by crossing different types of bananas.
Bananas are not only eaten as food. Banana peels are used to make black dye; leaves are used for baking, instead of foil and baking paper; light buildings and rafts are made from stems; The leaves are used to make packages.

And about the current, how and where they grow. Now I propose to find out about bananas.

Since childhood, we have become accustomed to finding bananas growing on palm trees. However, it turns out that a banana is an ant. Of course, not the one that grows on lawns, but a giant one, reaching a height of 5-6 to 15 m.

Murava, that means! It’s hard for an inhabitant of central Russia, accustomed to bending over backwards to look for strawberries and lingonberries in the forest ant, to imagine a banana grass three or four meters high, on the stem of which hang three hundred “berries” weighing half a centner. Moreover, the diameter of the “grass” is a good ten centimeters. At the top it ends in a spreading panicle of elongated leaves (which is why the European reaction is unambiguous: palm tree). From a rosette of leaves hanging down from above, something like a one and a half meter long trunk hangs down.

Bananas not only have a trunk (like trees) - they don’t even have the stem of a normal pipe. Its stem is more like a tuber and is almost invisible above the ground. But they eat huge fan leaves, up to 6 m long and up to a meter wide.

The inflorescence bears 250-300 tiny bananas. The trunk is correctly called a “bunch,” and what we buy and call clusters are actually clusters of four to seven fused fruits. A real banana bunch is an abyss of pasterns, closely adjacent to each other. Bananas have been famous to mankind since ancient times.

Their cradle is the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, mainly India and China. At least in these areas, bananas have long been revered as sacred fruits that restore strength and nourish the intellect. Some Indian pagodas that have survived from those times have roofs that exactly replicate the shapes of a banana: that is how it was revered. From India and China, banana civilization spread to Asia Minor.

Later they began to be cultivated on the east and west coasts of Africa. In the 16th century, they were brought to the Canary Islands, Central and Midday America. They are considered to be the last banana plantations in the world, and they have become the most important in their cultivation and trade: Ecuador, Colombia, Panama supply the whole of Europe with bananas. If before we ate - and it’s clear why - quite a few Cuban varieties, now we are also full-fledged Europeans: most of all, in our market there are Ecuadorian fruits.

A few words about how it looks like they are collecting bananas. As soon as the bogs on the bunch begin to form, a plastic cover is immediately pulled over it, so that, God forbid, nothing gets stuck on the ripening fruits. They grow that much under hoods, protected from tropical insect pests, for eleven weeks. They don’t reach absolute ripeness, but they are lucky to be on another continent!

At this stage the harvest time comes. Nothing has changed over the centuries: as if our great-grandfathers and grandfathers were harvesting the harvest, they still get along. The proletarian, including a long pole with a powerful cleaver fastened to the coffin, approaches the trunk and, reaching high, cuts off a huge bunch. And as if she would rustle down... (I see that our people have already shuddered, responding to the weekend of six hundred square meters: an apple or a pear will fall - it’s a pity that it will remain! And here fifty kilograms of banana tenderness crash to the ground?!)

So they got scared to no avail - a centuries-old experiment makes: the pipes are the most important landing place for the bunch than the ramen and the hump of the second proletarian, especially near the one standing. Having cheerfully absorbed the load, he carries the harvest on himself to the line. There, the bunches will be disassembled into shallow parts, thrown into tanks with a special liquid for greater disinfection and long-term preservation, and subsequently caught, dried, wrapped in plastic, packed in branded boxes, and they will travel by sea, by airplane, or in other directions. . And the “trunk” from which the bunch was cut is no longer a lodger. Dries up.

She is an ant and eats an ant. However, from the rhizome, new “blades of grass” are already emerging from the ground into the light of God. The truth is, they take all year to grow to maturity. And they will also bring only one bunch, but the process of renewal on the plantations is continuous. It’s as if the harvest is continuous in a warm climate: some bunches are cut, others ripen, others are tied... In a word, long live the immortal tropical summer! And aha, bananas will not be lost on our table!

At night, banana flowers are visited by bats, and during the day they are visited by countless insects, sunbirds and squirrel-like animals - tupayas, which are distant relatives of monkeys. Bananas generously treat all visitors with nectar. After pollination, the covering leaves fall off and fruits begin to set in place of the flowers. There are so many lateral inflorescences on one peduncle that when the final covering leaves begin to open on its coffin, the fruits at the base are already ripe.

The yellow, crescent-shaped fruit of the banana drop looks like a berry*, however, from a botanist's point of view, a banana is a berry with a leathery shell and a sweet pulp, in which countless seeds are immersed (if you cut a banana, you can see tiny black dots inside).

It must be said that not all types of bananas have the same fruits that we can get in our markets and stores. Eat shorter fruits, eat oval or almost round ones, eat longer and more filigree ones. When the skin matures, it sometimes does not turn yellow, but turns red. However, such bananas are not delivered to us - they are terrible at transportation.

After fruiting, the entire huge above-ground portion of the plant dies, but from the base of the false stem, underground shoots have already begun to grow, which will give rise to the newly formed false stems. This is how bananas multiply vegetatively.

The emerald banana has the consistency of a potato and at the same time tastes very astringent and resinous - absolutely inedible. Bananas are harvested by completely cutting down a smooth grassy trunk, with one blow of a sickle - sometimes one and the same offspring (what is falsely called a palm tree in Russia) does not bear fruit. Then the bunch is cut off from the trunk and left to ripen. A few days after harvest, emerald bananas ripen and become the familiar canary bananas. The trade in emerald bananas is widely publicized.

The banana came to us from Malaysia, where it has been cultivated for 10 thousand years. Wild bananas, such as can still be found in Southeast Asia, have large, hard seeds and very little pulp. They are pollinated by bats.

Your supermarket banana is an evolved variety, chosen by planters for its fleshy flesh and lack of seeds. Cultivation produced a plant that is sweet, tasty, but sterile: such a banana is not able to multiply without human help.

Most banana plants have not had “sex” for 10 thousand years. Each of the bananas that we eat with such bliss is utilitarian, propagated by hand: from the offspring of an already existing plant, whose genetic fund has not been updated for as many as 100 centuries. As a result, bananas are extremely susceptible to various types of ailments. Many of its forms have already fallen victim to fungal infections, such as “black sigatoka” and “Panama disease,” which are susceptible to the effects of fungicides. And if a genetically modified variety is not developed as soon as possible, we may forget about bananas forever.

The problem, by the way, is quite fundamental. Bananas are portrayed as the world's most profitable export civilization. The branch costs $12 billion a year and supports 400 million people, many of whom live below the poverty line.

Most bananas come from hot regions, but, paradoxically, Iceland is Europe's largest banana producer. Bananas are grown in spacious greenhouses heated by geothermal waters, a total of two degrees half a day above the polar world.

Fyffe's, a multinational importing company that annually purchases Belize's banana crop, portrays itself as Irish.

For the same weight, dried bananas contain 5 more calories than fresh ones.

India produces more bananas than any other part of the world.

Sprinter Linford Christie, an Olympic gold medalist, adds fried plantain to his diet before competitions or training.

In East Africa, bananas are fermented and beer is made from them.

Articles By topic:

Past tense (Präteritum) Along with Präteritum and Perfekt, it is included in the stage of past tenses. As a complex past tense, it consists of the auxiliary verbs haben or sein in the form Präteritum and the semantic verb in the form of the second participle (Partizip II). Choice of auxiliary verb	Lunar calendar of surgical operations Everyone who is about to undergo surgery carefully approaches the organization of this process: chooses a surgeon, discusses the nuances of the operation, possible complications and recovery time. It will also be important to choose the date for the operation.
The influence of the Moon on the fulfillment of desires The Full Moon is the highest point of the Moon's growth and an extremely powerful time. On this day, you can influence your destiny and change your life for the better if you know how to achieve harmony with lunar energy. The full moon has long been considered a mystical time: full	Are there insects in Antarctica In Antarctica, as you know, almost no snow falls - the winds drag the same snowflakes across the continent. Our elite is also almost never replenished; this is generally characteristic of stagnation, when vertical mobility is reduced to zero. In public policy - the same

Popular

2024-09-14 02:30:41	AI Warnings
2024-09-13 02:17:19	Characteristics of utterance levels as units of teaching speaking in a foreign language
2024-09-13 02:17:19	Center for Advanced Studies Advanced training, professional retraining
2024-09-12 02:14:28	Cis oleic acid. Oleic acid. Receipt and application. Production and chemical properties
2024-09-11 02:15:10	Artistic features of haiku matsuo basho as poetry of knowledge, spiritual transformation A father yearns for his child
2024-09-10 02:20:31	Why do you dream about a nest according to the dream book?
2024-09-10 02:20:31	Description and interpretation of the dream emerald
2024-09-09 02:12:10	Compatibility of a rooster and a pig in a relationship Compatibility of a rooster and a pig according to the horoscope
2024-09-07 02:24:25	Composition of Mezim: digestive enzymes in the treatment of stomach
2024-09-07 02:24:25	Regulation of enzyme activity and their methods Molecular mechanisms of regulation of enzyme activity

New

2024-08-23 02:06:21	Treatment of stalking mania: symptoms and signs Can stalking mania go away over time?
2024-08-20 02:06:20	Why did you dream about champagne?
2024-08-19 02:06:19	How to remove chin irritation in women and men Skin irritation on the chin
2024-08-18 02:06:06	Valentina Matvienko: biography, personal life, husband, children (photo)
2024-08-15 02:06:40	Piero della Francesca (Piero di Benedetto or Piero dal Borgo)
2024-08-15 02:06:40	Doctor Komarovsky’s opinion on DPT vaccination
2024-09-16 02:12:42	Past tense (Präteritum)
2024-09-15 02:17:34	Lunar calendar of surgical operations
2024-09-15 02:17:34	The influence of the Moon on the fulfillment of desires
2024-09-14 02:30:41	Are there insects in Antarctica
2024-09-14 02:30:41	AI Warnings
2024-09-13 02:17:19	Characteristics of utterance levels as units of teaching speaking in a foreign language