Bananas in Russia have long ceased to be exotic, but still not many people know where and how these fruits grow. Meanwhile, bananas are not only sweet fruits, but also useful stems, beautiful decorative flowers.
The banana, which everyone is used to thinking of as a fruit, is far from a fruit. Banana is a grass, however, not ordinary, but gigantic, reaching from 5 to 15 meters in size. This herb grows only in subtropical and tropical climates, because it requires a large amount of moisture and heat for vegetation.
Banana sprouts are sometimes referred to as the banana tree, but this has more to do with the size of the plant than with its botanical nature. A plant not only lacks a trunk, as a tree should have, but also does not have a stem in the usual sense of the word. The banana stem is almost invisible above the ground, only the leaves are visible, which are truly huge, real fans, reaching a meter in width and 6 meters in length.
Banana life
Bananas can grow, like most common types of herbs, very quickly. The plant grows to 8 meters in just a year. Growth rates, the size of the grass and its fruits depend on the variety. There are a lot of varieties - about 500. Among them are edible bananas of all kinds of colors and sizes, and inedible ones that are used in industrial production (for example, textile or Japanese banana).
Bananas bloom very beautifully. A large inflorescence appears from the center of the plexus of leaves, usually pink or purple, with soft velvety flowers. In agricultural cultivation of bananas, the flowers are cut off so that the fruits ripen better, otherwise the plant may simply not have enough strength and nutrients. A bunch of banana is born under each of these flowers.
Huge leaves reliably cover the banana fruits from aggressive environmental influences: sunlight, insects, precipitation.
The banana fruit is a juicy berry enclosed in a dense leathery shell. It is in the flesh of a banana that the seeds ripen. After the fruits ripen, the leaves and stem completely die off, and new young shoots of the next plant begin to germinate from the base.
The birthplace of the banana
Bananas grow in countries near the equator, as fruit ripening requires a tropical climate - high levels of humidity and constant warmth. Among the countries where the largest volumes of bananas are grown are countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Most of these countries grow bananas for domestic consumption, only a few for export.
Each banana bunch can contain up to 300 bananas.
In agricultural cultivation of a banana, the fruits are not allowed to ripen, since after that they can no longer be used for food - the fruits easily deteriorate after ripening. That is why the harvest is still green. Green bananas are sweetish-astringent in taste, similar to potatoes, but not suitable for consumption. After harvesting, the unripe fruits of a banana are placed in storage, yellow and ripe, as everyone is used to seeing them, bananas become a few days later.
