GOING BANANAS

A riddle

It appears to be a tree, but is in fact a giant herb. Like humans, it has a head, eyes, hands and fingers. It's a sex symbol, a star of slapstick comedy and a sign of madness. It's one of the most delicious tropical fruits, nutritious and easy to eat. It could provide you, if you needed, with shelter and a basic raft. What on earth could this be but the beautiful banana?

A hand of ripe bananas.

Brief history

Bananas are believed to have originated in Asia, though these days they can be found in tropical regions all round the globe. Their name comes from the Guinea Coast of Africa, where Portuguese colonists of the fifteenth century discovered that they had an appealing taste, grew quickly, and were easy to transplant.

Commercial plantations sprang up wherever jungles could be cleared, especially in Central America and the Caribbean. Finally, citizens of temperate zones were able to experience the exotic taste of the banana. They liked it so much that these days over five million tons a year are shipped around the world.

Varieties

As a result of such intensive cultivation, there are now hundreds of varieties of banana, from the foot-long, green plantain used for cooking to the six-inch, yellow fruit most commonly exported and short, stubby, red bananas with a particularly rich taste.

Countries where several varieties are grown have as many names for them as eskimos have for snow, but English has never developed its banana vocabulary beyond unlikely-sounding scientific names like 'Gros Michel' and 'Dwarf Cavendish', the types seen most often in the USA and Europe.

The banana's body

The banana is self-reproductive, sending up suckers from an underground rhizome, which explains why it is generally found in clumps. Its 'head' is the base of a sucker and its 'eyes' are the dormant buds on the rhizome.

What appears to be a trunk is a tightly-compressed stalk of leaf stems with a watery consistency comparable to a celery stalk. This makes it light and buoyant enough for several stems lashed together to make a usable raft.

The leaf itself is a broad, flat, waxy sheet up to three metres long with many handy uses, including improvised shelter in a storm. Each new leaf, which emerges like a long green cigar before unfurling, makes the stem grow taller.

Banana inflorescence.

Banana leaves have a lovely translucent quality.

Banana magic

When the plant is mature, at 12 to 15 months, the banana's real magic begins. A large, purple, teardrop-shaped inflorescence appears on a stalk from the centre of the stem and gradually pulls the plant to one side with its rapidly- increasing weight.

How many fingers and hands?

The velvety bracts (coloured leaves) of this enormous bud gradually curl up to reveal a shiny, deep-maroon interior and lines of delicate white and yellow flowers. These quickly harden into the green 'fingers' which make up a 'hand' of bananas. Each hand may have 12-20 fingers and each bunch may contain 6-15 hands.

The bracts continue to curl up then drop off as the fruits develop. The weight of a good bunch can be more than 50 kilos, so it is often necessary to prop up the watery stem to prevent the plant from collapsing. Once the bunch is ready to be harvested, the whole plant must be cut down to make way for new suckers coming through.

Everyone loves eating bananas.

Packed with nutrition

A banana is delicious to eat just the way it is. The skin peels off easily and it has no hard or bitter seeds (at least not in commercial varieties) to disturb the eater. The soft flesh is ideal for babies and its nutritional benefits include vitamins A, B and C.

It is a favourite dessert, being served up as a banana split, banana flambe or banana cake. Other tasty alternatives include frying it with sesame seeds or soaking it in honey.

A multi-purpose plant

Humans being what they are, however, have found an almost endless list of uses for the fruit and the plant from which it comes. Plantains, sections of the stem and the flowers are cooked in curries and other savoury dishes in some countries.

The large flat leaves are ideal as a base to display foodstuffs or to wrap things in. Easily cut and worked, the leaves can also be fashioned into small containers and dishes in which to steam and serve food. The tough outer fibres of the stem are also used for making rope.

The leaf makes an attractive and effective wrapper for noodles.

In countries like Thailand where the plant is indigenous, other uses have become part of the local culture through the centuries. Children's games include riding on a horse made from the stiff spine of the leaves, and the yearly Loy Krathong Festival (in November) features a small raft made of a sliced cross-section of banana stem decorated with candles, incense and flowers.

Beefing up banana awareness

Though the banana is hardly in danger of extinction, some of its more ingenious uses seem to be fading in favour of hi-tech alternatives. Most krathongs in Thailand these days are made of plastic foam, and plastic bags have almost completely replaced the banana leaf for wrapping items.

The resistance of these materials to the process of decay, however, causes insuperable problems of appropriate disposal. Perhaps the time has come for a 'banana awareness campaign'.

Of sex, comedy, politics and insanity

As for the fruit's other claims to fame, these probably show more about the concerns of modern man than they do about the qualities of a banana. Its use as a sexual symbol is widespread to say the least; one big producer once ran a successful campaign to boost sales with the slogan 'unzip a banana'.

Watching someone else slip up on a banana skin and crash to the ground in humiliation is a guaranteed cause of laughter, and the gag has been performed so many times that the term 'banana skin' is now used to refer to any embarrassing misfortune.

'Banana republics' appear to be on the increase these days if the term applies, as my dictionary tells me, to any politically-unstable country. What's left of humanity after we take off those preoccupied with sex, the bad luck of others or political power? The rest of us are going bananas, wondering what it's all about.