Been arguing about this for years with my cousin. Sometimes that black stuff in the middle of the banana is just dots and other times it’s a very noticeable hard string.
I always argued that it was seeds because of the black dots.
Whatever it is, I split the banana in half and remove it, if it’s a solid, hard string. You often find them towards the end of the banana. I found a black string about 2 inches long today in a banana.
I’m sure it must have a name. My google fu is failing. Anyone know?
I don’t know what structure you’re referring to, but the black dots are in fact aborted seeds. Bananas are triploid, so are unable to successfully undergo meiosis. Seed development is therefore halted at an early stage. In wild, diploid ancestral bananas, the “fruit” part is merely a thin layer around a series of ping-pong ball sized seeds.
I didn’t know bananas had corms. The cladistic on Wikipedia doesn’t make them out to be that closely related to daylilies and irises, but that does seem similar. Then again, they’re both monocots, and I’m used to other stuff I plant being eudicots (new word!), so there you go.
BTW, watermelons have similar genetics to bananas, in that a cross between diploid and tetraploid individuals produces a sterile seedless triploid. To get seedless watermelons, however, a fresh batch of hybrid seeds is produced, and seedless melons grown from them, rather than continually cloning them. If you like, you can buy packages of seedless watermelon seeds.
Probably, but not worth the trouble due to the enormous seeds. Modern bananas derive from two wild species:
Modern cultivars of the acuminata type are the sweeter “dessert” bananas you typically think of. balbisiana hybrid types are cooking bananas like plantains.
The wiki article on acuminata suggests that it may have originally been cultivated for something other than eating the fruit:
You had me for a while there, but lost me at “male bud.” (haha)
Thanks! That was informative and interesting. I’m glad to learn the plantains’ place in it. I’ve always had a vague wondering about bananas and plantains since living in Latin America. Just never looked it up.
A while back, I decided to try other banana varieties besides the Cavendish. The only ones available were little yellow and little red varieties. To me they tasted just like the big yellow ones. Are there other sweet bananas (not plantains) that taste different from the usual Cavendish?
