🐇 Down the Rabbit Hole #2: Bananas Are Weirder Than They Have Any Right to Be

I learned something about bananas.

And unfortunately, I kept looking.

It started with this:

The bananas we eat are basically clones.

Which sounds fake.

So naturally, I needed to know more.

Most of the bananas you see sitting in grocery stores are Cavendish bananas.

And unlike the wild bananas they came from, the bananas we eat don’t reproduce normally through seeds. If you’ve ever noticed those tiny little black specks inside your banana, those aren’t functioning seeds you could plant and grow yourself a banana tree.

Commercial Cavendish bananas are propagated vegetatively.

Basically, growers take part of an existing banana plant and use it to grow another one.

And another one.

And another one.

Which means they’re genetically nearly identical.

Clones.

So apparently the entire banana section at the grocery store is just one giant family reunion where everybody looks suspiciously alike.

Cool.

But then I found out this isn’t just a fun little banana fact.

It’s actually a problem.

Because when you have huge populations of genetically similar plants, a disease that can successfully attack one of them has a pretty good chance of attacking the others.

And bananas have already been through this shit before.

Before the Cavendish became the banana most of us know, another variety dominated the international banana trade:

Gros Michel.

Then a fungal disease commonly called Panama disease devastated Gros Michel plantations during the first half of the 20th century.

So the banana industry needed another banana.

Enter:

The Cavendish.

It was resistant to the strain causing all that destruction, so growers switched varieties and the Cavendish eventually became the supermarket banana we’re familiar with today.

Problem solved.

Except…

not really.

Because another strain of the fungus—known as Tropical Race 4, or TR4—can infect Cavendish bananas.

So we essentially replaced one vulnerable banana monoculture with another banana monoculture that is now facing its own fungal enemy.

Apparently bananas have sequels.

And the villain came back. 🍌☠️

At this point I should have stopped researching bananas.

I did not.

Because then I learned that a group of bananas growing together is called a hand.

And an individual banana?

A finger.

Yes.

You can eat a finger from a hand of bananas.

I don’t like that sentence either.

And THEN—

because apparently bananas hadn’t caused enough problems for me yet—

bananas are berries.

Botanically speaking, a banana qualifies as a berry because of the way the fruit develops from the flower.

Which immediately raises an obvious question:

If bananas are berries…

what about strawberries?

No.

Strawberries aren’t true botanical berries.

Of course they’re not.

That would make too much fucking sense.

Strawberries are considered aggregate accessory fruits.

So somewhere along the evolutionary timeline, humanity looked at a strawberry, put berry directly in its name, and botany eventually showed up like:

Actually…

Meanwhile, banana is standing in the corner quietly being a berry without telling anybody.

And this entire rabbit hole started because I learned my grocery-store banana was a clone.

Now I know that bananas have been involved in an ongoing fungal war, their family units have hands and fingers, bananas are berries, and strawberries have apparently been lying to us this entire time.

I was happier before I researched bananas.

But now you know too.

You’re welcome. 😂🍌

Until next time,

—Destiny

P.S. What completely random question should I fall down the rabbit hole with next?