[Sca-cooks] bananas

[Decker, Terry D.]

Modern hybrids have been grown mainly to provide bigger fruit better able to
stand transporting.  They have nothing to do with the seeds being sterile.

Ovieda reports that banana shoots were taken to the New World.  Ergo, the
period domesticated banana had sterile seeds.

The botanical opinion is the banana was one of the first domesticated plants
and that the sterility of the seeds occurred sometime in the Neolithic,
improving the plant for human consumption and requiring human intervention
to reproduce.  IIRC, all members of the genus Musa including the plantain
have sterile seeds and are considered domesticated.  Other genera in the
family Musacae have seeds of varying sizes and viability.

I'm about to disappear for the weekend as the wife is handling gate at
Beltane Games, but I'll try to check that comment about the Musa.

Bear

> Okay, but are you referring to a modern hybrid? or to period bananas?
> Here are two messages from my fruit-bananas-msg file. Of course, it is
> also possible they are really talking about the plantain.
>
> Stefan li Rous
> stefan at texas.net