We’re going bananas over here! Bananas are among the most wonderfully useful plants known to man: they have been used for food, clothing and shelter for over 10,000 years! Archaeologists have found remnants of banana cultivation in New Guinean digs dating to the ninth millennium B.C. They found their way into Buddhist texts by 600 B.C. and into the mouth of Alexander the Great in his conquest of western India. Early bananas had hard seeds inside; the popular “Cavendish” variety has removed this inconvenience. This cousin of the plantain also starts out hard and starchy, but its meat becomes soft and sweet as it ripens. The fibers of the plant have been used for centuries to produce textiles as fine as silk and as strong as canvas. Extremely high in vitamins and minerals, the banana has been called the nearly perfect food: low in fat, high in fiber, it high in simple carbohydrates, which are useful to animals that aren’t sedentary. There are over 300 varieties of bananas, some of which grow to over 50’ in height in less than a year! Bananas mature about three months from the time of flowering, with each bunch producing about 15 "hands" or rows. Each hand has about 20 bananas while each bunch will yield about 200 "fingers" or bananas. An average bunch of bananas can weigh between 80 and 125 pounds (35 to 50 kilograms). The world grows nearly 80 million tons annually, with India producing over 20% of the total, so eat up!
“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana” Groucho Marx
