Welcome to You Ask Andy

Tom Nidals, age 9, of Shreveport, La

How do bananas grow?

Those yellow bananas we eat on our cereal come from the biggest herb plants in the world. A big benana plant is large enough to be mistaken for a tree. Full grown, it may stand twenty feet talk The top is crowded with a rosette of palm‑like leaves: There may be twenty leaves, some of them are two feet wide and twelve feet long. The so‑called trunk is often sixteen inches wide. But there is no real wood in a banana plant. That is why we call it a herb instead of a tree.

The big herb grows from a old rootstock left in the ground after last years harvest, All the growing from the first shoot to the ripe bananas is done in a little over a year. A new plant begins to grow soon after the ripe bananas are harvested. It begins as a slender shoot poking up through the loose, damp soil.

This shoot is a wand of furled leaves. New leaves grow inside the stem$ pushing the older leaves outwards. When the stalk is tall enough, the shady parasol of leaves begins to fan out at the top. No matter how tall and wide it gets, the stalk is always soft enough to be cut with a bread knife. Since bananas like warm climates, many of them grow in the path of the hurricanes. It takes only a stiff breeze to blow them down. Usually, however, the plants hold up long enough for the bananas to ripen.

At the proper time, a thin spike begins to grow at the top of the plant through the parasol of leaves. It shows signs of buds. It shoots up fast and soon bends over and down. The buds develop into a cluster of yellowish blossoms. The banana plant is in bloom.

The petals fade and fall as all petals fade and fall. Now you can see the beginnings of the bananas. Circles of small green baby bananas hang down around the spike. As they grow, they turn so that their tips point to the sky. They remain this way until they are fat enough to cover the spike hanging down through the leaves. At last they are as big as those bananas that add such a wonderful flavor to cereals and sundaes.

The big bunch of bananas is harvested while still green. It is cut down with a sharp blade and gently lowered to a cart. Each circle of bananas around the stem is called a hand and each banana is called a finger. To ripen, the big bunches are hung upside down, that is with the fingertips' pointing to the ground, On the trees, they pointed in the other direction, They are stored in a room at about 64 degrees and they ripen to a beautiful yellow color in a week or so.

The banana plant on the plantation has now done Its work. Usually it is cut down and left on the ground. It soon rots away, its fibers break up and go back into the soil. This enriches the soil with more plant food for new bananas to grow, The new plants grow from the old rootstocks.

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