The banana is a perennialherb cultivated in tropical and sub tropical climates. Bananas are fast-growing, arising from underground rhizomes. The fleshy stalks or pseudostems formed by upright concentric layers of leaf sheaths constitute the functional trunks. The true stem begins as an underground corm which grows upwards, pushing its way out through the centre of the stalk 10 to 15 months after planting, eventually producing the terminal inflorescence which will later bear the fruit. Each stalk produces one huge flowercluster and then dies. New stalks then grow from the rhizome. The large rectangular or elliptic leaf blades are extensions of the sheaths of the pseudostem and are joined to them by fleshy, deeply grooved, short petioles. The leaves unfurl, as the plant grows, at the rate of one per week in warm weather, and extend upward and outward , becoming as much as 2.5 metres long and 0.75 metres wide. They may be entirely green, green with maroon patches, or green on the upper side and red-purple beneath. The leaf veins run from the mid-rib straight to the outer edge of the leaf. Even when the wind shreds the leaf, the veins are still able to function. Approximately 44 leaves will appear before the inflorescence. The banana inflorescence shooting out from the heart in the tip of the stem, is at first a large, long-oval, tapering, purple-clad bud. As it opens, the slim, nectar-rich, tubular, toothed, white flowers appear. They are clustered in whorled double rows along the floral stalk, each cluster covered by a thick, waxy, hood like bract, purple outside and deep red within.
The flowers occupying the first five to fifteen rows are female. As the rachis of the inflorescence continues to elongate, sterile flowers with abortive male and female parts appear, followed by normal staminate ones with abortive ovaries. The two latter flower types eventually drop in most edible bananas. The ovaries contained in the first (female) flowers grow rapidly, developing parthenocarpically into clusters of fruits, called hands. The number of hands varies with the species and variety.
The fruit (technically a berry) turns from deep green to yellow or red, and may range from ten centimetres to thirty centimetres in length and two centimetres to five centimetres in diameter. The flesh, ivory-white to yellow or salmon-yellow, may be firm, astringent, even gummy with latex when unripe, turning tender and slippery, or soft and mellow or rather dry and mealy or starchy when ripe. The flavour may be mild and sweet or slightly acid with a distinct appletone. The common cultivated types are generally seedless with just vestiges of ovules visible as brown specks. Occasionally, cross-pollination with wild types will result in a number of seeds in a normally seedless variety. Research Banana
The Mona Lisa is a new variety of banana that has a nice fruity flavour and is grown in Costa Rica. The skin is thicker and softer than the Cavendish's and even when the fruit looks bruised and has dark patches, the fruit inside is still firm and undamaged. Mona Lisa ripens differently than the popular Cavendish dessert banana. The fruit is sweetest when completely ripe - that is, yellow from tip to tip with no green showing. Research Mona Lisa
Musaceae is a family of large, tropical, herbaceous plants generally without true stems, with large handsome leaves and flowers aggregated on spadices protected by spathes. The family includes the banana, plantain and abaca. Research Musaceae
Sir Henry Morton Stanley was a Welsh journalist and African explorer. He was born in 1841 and died in 1904. He was originally James Rowlands, but after going to America at the age of seventeen found employment with a Mr H. M. Stanley and assumed his benefactors name. After serving in the American Civil War he became a journalist and war correspondent. In 1869 he was commissioned to find Livingston, and met him on November 10th 1871 at Ujili on Lake Tanganyika, and returned to the coast at Bagamoyo, bringing with him the traveller's journals and papers.
On his return from the Ashanti expedition of 1873 - 1874 he was provided by the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph and New York Herald with funds for a journey across Central Africa, which he commenced from Bagamoyo on November 17th 1874. On this occasion he circumnavigated the Victoria Nyanza and LakeTanganyika, partly surveyed the Albert Nyanza, and traced the Congo from Nyangwe, the lowest point on the Lualaba reached by Cameron and Livingstone, to the highest point reached from the ocean by Tuckey in 1816, proceeding thence to Banana. He returned to the Congo at the instance of the King of Belgium and remained there from August 1879 until June 1884. His last visit to Africa was in 1887 as leader of the Emin Pasha relief expedition, when he discovered Ruwenzori and the Albert Edward Nyanza. Research Henry Stanley
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Abbreviations
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