Banana
Full Name: Banana
Details:
We can thank [first described by] Candolle* for writing the first scientific description of the banana in his monumental text Prodromus Systemis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis. The banana is a fruit of the genus Musa, in the family Musaceae, which is derived from the wild speciesMusa acuminata and Musa balbisiana.’
It is believed that there are almost 1,000 varieties of bananas in the world, subdivided in 50 groups. However the Cavendish variety, developed in 1836, accounted for almost all the cultivated bananas, but was wiped out by a disease; we have an inferior vaiety now, which could meet the same fate. The fruit is produced on a false trunk that grows from a rhizome, or underground stem. After the plant dies, it is replaced by suckers that grow from the rhizome. One rhizome can live for many years.
The trunk, which can grow 10 to 20 feet high, is composed of the basal portions of leaf sheaths and is crowned with a rosette of 10 to 20 large oblong leaves. A single, large flower spike grows from the top of the trunk, carrying numerous yellow flowers that will become bananas. Under the weight of the growing fruit, the flower spike bends toward the ground. A ripe banana is 75 percent water. The plant has 50 to 100 individual bananas, or fingers, which are grouped into clusters, or hands, of 10 to 20.
"North Americans began consuming bananas on a small scale at very high prices shortly after the Civil War, though it was only in the 1880s that it became more widespread. As late as the Victorian Era, bananas were not widely known in Europe, although they were available. Jules Verne introduces bananas to his readers with detailed descriptions in Around the World in Eighty Days.The earliest modern plantations originated in Jamaica and the related Western Caribbean Zone, including most of Central America. It involved the combination of modern transportation networks of radio, steamships and railroads with the development of refrigeration that allowed bananas to have more time between harvesting and ripening.
North America shippers started this process in the 1870s, but railroad builders like Minor C Keith also participated, eventually culminating in the multi-national giant corporations like today's Chiquita Brands International and Dole United Fruit Company backed by Dulles brothers). These companies were monopolistic, vertically integrated (meaning they controlled growing, processing, shipping and marketing) and usually used political manipulation to build enclave economies (economies that were internally self-sufficient, virtually tax exempt, and export oriented that contribute very little to the host economy). Their political maneuvers, which gave rise to the term Banana republic for states like Honduras and Guatemala, included working with local elites and their rivalries to influence politics or playing the international interests of the United States, especially during the Cold War, to keep the political climate favorable to their interests." Today, intensive use of chemicals affect workers and wildlife.
Oneliner: Banana
Bibliography:
- Dan Koeppel,author ofBanana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, gives us a primer on the expansive history — and the endangered future — of this seedless, sexless fruit (audio interview).
- Encyclopædia Britannica. 2003.
- EncyclopædiaBritannica Online. 06 Jul, 2003l
[http://search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=12248].
- Banana: Characteristics (UNCTAD). July 7, 2003. http://r0.unctad.org/infocomm/anglais/banana/characteristics.htm.
The Knowledge Web by James Burkepage 148 on radio and bananas