Banana trees only bear fruit once. A giant red flower forms at the top of the tree, in the center of the palm fronds; from this spills a vine on which bananas grow. They start in a full circle around about the middle of the length of the vine, and the further down the vine in consecutively smaller circles, like an inverted wedding cake. The bananas at the end of the vine, those that receive the least nutrients, are often too small to eat.
Another interesting fact: Bananas are a non seed-bearing fruit. A biology teacher told me that. He explained that banana seeds are triploid and get stuck in the second phase of meiosis and so never fully develop. The banana prepares places for these seeds – the black pock marks neatly arranged around the cross-section of a banana – however, the seeds never come to fruition. Rather, banana trees reproduce at the roots. Over a course of years, a single banana tree becomes a network of banana trees; flowering trees are connected to and dependent upon the roots of the once-flowering stumps that came before them.
We have a lot of banana trees here. R and J have two in their backyard. R's dad has dozens. A few days ago, R's brother came by with a few bunches. Yesterday, some of the bananas were already turning black. I showed R how to make banana bread with old bananas using a small stovetop pot in the oven, which we never use and had to move across the kitchen to plug in. R liked it. So did Jo. So did B-Roy and T. It was good – moister than any cake that I've eaten here. It reminded me of home, where we eat banana bread often, and have no banana trees.
