Lynette Rains, age 10, of Warner, Alberta, Canada, for her question:

How do they plant seedless bananas?

Chances are, you never found a banana seed. Even if you did, the tiny thing could not sprout a new banana tree. Since new banana groves are planted all the time, there must be another way. And so there is. In a year or so, the trunks or stems may be a foot thick. They are topped with crowns of huge green leaves, which may be 1 or 2 feet wide and 6 to 10 feet long. But none of the fast growing banana plants sprouts from a seed.

After a year or so, the average banana plant sprouts a long stalk of flowers, which fade away and begin to form a great fistful of fruit. In a few months, the bananas are ripe. Then the whole plant dies down. Instead of growing more bananas, it sprouts small shoots around its roots. Growers take these rooted sprouts from the old parent plant and set them in the ground. They become new banana plants.