I promise not to turn this blog into a banana blog, but the rapid development of this flower continues to astonish me. On day 4, the outermost “leaf” (which I’ve learned is actually a bract) fell to the ground revealing the first row of bananas.
The second bract is lifting and beginning to reveal its own baby bananas.
I’ve had a hard time finding the names of the parts of the banana flower on the internet. However, the Ganesh Mani Pradhan & Son Nursery has come partly to the rescue by creating a nicely illustrated Banana Flower Salad. The salad is served in the flower bracts and a visit to the site is worthwhile simply to see the image of the completed salad.
What intrigues me is that a fully developed stalk of bananas grows “upside down,” with the ends of the bananas pointing to the sky. See the Wikipedia entry for Musa, the genus name of bananas, for an example. Scroll about 2/3 of the way down the page for the stalk. The young flower in our back yard, though, as well as the flower used in the Banana Flower Salad, has the ends of the young bananas pointing to the ground. Will they eventually fold up and point to the sky?
The suspense is killing me.
Related articles
- Johnny’s Bananas (savoringeverybite.wordpress.com)
I look forward to future posts to see how the fruits develop as I’ve never witnessed it myself. The best examples of flower to fruit re-orientation I’ve personally observed are in Liliaceae. Fritillaria have drooping flowers but erect seed capsules and Cardiocrinum giganteum also displays this behaviour turning this into this.
One interesting fact I can relate from my training, is that as the banana berry develops from an inferior ovary it’s technically referred to as a “pepo”. This is the same fruit type found in the Cucurbitaceae.
More banana blogging say I.
(It even sounds good as well)
Nuytsia
Beware what you ask for, you may get it.
Thanks for the interesting information on flower to fruit re-orientation in Lilliaceae. I hope I can watch that happen in the banana. Things are happening so fast I almost feel I need to stand there with a camcorder to get it all. For example, the morning of day 4 I saw the first bract rolling up from the bottom and starting to peel away. By the time I went into the house to get my camera and returned, it had already dropped to the ground!
I’m enjoying the photo series. You’re definately starting to get a curl up on that first bunch. It’s great to see this happening over a series of days. It’s a bit like the Amorphophallus development shots that Kew put out, only slightly more culinary!
I was just going to comment on recent developments when I noticed the large amount of winking on the discussion thread! … I’ve completely lost my train of thought…
Oh yes! The photo series is great. The fruit curl up is really clearly shown in your photos. Would this be a negative geotrophic response I wonder? I mean what would happen an inflorescence was staked and held it erect? Would the fruit still curl back against the stem?
Oh dear. Please put an “if” between happen and an.
It’s all those winking faces.
This is really very interesting. A coworker of mine has been supplying me with bananas from his trees and I’ve been inquiring about planting a banana tree but was unsure of the process. Thanks for sharing this.
Thanks, Linda. I must say your recipes look absolutely luscious and you’ve given me some great ideas about what to do with all those extra bananas (banana bread can only go so far)!
~ Mary