Re: Hardy Bananas

   From: K1MIZE@aol.com
   Date: Sun, 19 Sep 1999 01:51:44 EDT

   Ahem (I've been wanting to use that expression ever since Dave Poole used
   it on me in our discussion of leaf-cutter bees, if anyone remembers that),

LOL! I'm so glad I could help :-)

   according to the information I've been gathering online, all of the
   principle culinary varieties (known as bananas or plantains, in English)
   are either diploid, triploid, or tetraploid hybrids of just two species,

Way over my head...I don't know what those terms mean (okay, I understad
hybrid and species).

   M. acuminata and M. balbisiana, and the fruits don't produce seeds.  In

[Long explaination snipped]

All I can offer you is my own experience.  I lived in Nicaragua for 6
months in 1986 and visited someone with banana plants.  I watched them cut
off the green bunches of fruit and hang them to ripen.  I asked why they
didn't just let them ripen on the plant.  Hanging them up didn't seem to
change the timing of ripening (my guess) and when they wanted green bananas
for cooking they could have easily have cut one off the plant just as
cutting from the hanging bunch.  They told me it was because of the seed
developement.  That if you left the fruit on the plant you got big seeds.

In the early 1990's a friend of mine rented a cottage a couple miles from
my house in San Diego.  There was a banana plant outside with a big green
bunch of bananas.  I told her to cut them down and she never got around to
it.  They ripened on the plant.  Well I ate some of those bananas, as did
my friend.  They tasted great but they were filled with rows of huge black
seeds.  The seeds were smooth, round, and about 1/4 to 1/3" in diameter.

I don't know the variety of either of the bananas I encountered, but they
did not appear unusual to me.  The Nicaraguan ones were common cooking (and
eating fresh when ripe) bananas found in any market (called plantains in
English).  The San Diego one looked like a regular yellow banana, though
smaller than market ones.  I've seen a variety of bananas having lived so
close to Mexico and the ones I saw growing were run of the mill.

   I'll be driving her down to La Jolla this Friday (she's a freshman at UC
   San Diego, and it's move-in weekend)

Congrats.  I was a grad student at UCSD and taught in the DOC program (3rd
college, now Thurgood Marshall college).  I was in the Communication
dept...tell her to check it out; it's a great program and helps round out
even the hardcore science types, as does DOC.

Cyndi

_______________________________________________________________________________
Oakland, California            Zone 9 USDA; Zone 16 Sunset Western Garden Guide
Chemically sensitive/disabled - Organic Gardening only by choice and neccessity
_______________________________________________________________________________
"There's nothing wrong with me.  Maybe there's                     Cyndi Norman
something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG)           cyndi@consultclarity.com
                                                 http://www.consultclarity.com/
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