A Brief History
 The true origins of my favourite (and the world's most popular) fruit are to be found in the region of Malaysia. By way of curious visitors, bananas travelled from there to India where they are mentioned in the Buddhist Pali writings dating back to the 6th century BC. In his campaign in India in 327 BC, Alexander the Great relished his first taste of the banana, an unusual fruit he saw growing on tall trees. He is even credited with bringing the banana from India to the Western world. According to Chinese historian Yang Fu, China was tending plantations of bananas in 200 AD. These bananas grew only in the southern region of China and were considered exotic, rare fruits that never became popular with the Chinese masses until the 20th century. I can't believe it took them so long to catch on!
Eventually, this tropical fruit reached Madagascar, an island off the south-eastern coast of Africa. Beginning in 650 CE Islamic warriors travelled into Africa and were actively engaged in the slave trade. Along with the thriving business in slave trading, the Arabs were successful in trading ivory along with abundant crops of bananas. Through their numerous travels westward via the slave trade, bananas eventually reached Guinea, a small area along the West Coast of Africa. By 1402 Portuguese sailors discovered the luscious tropical fruit in their travels to the African continent and populated the Canary islands with their first banana plantations. Continuing the banana's travels westward, the rootstocks were packed onto a ship under the charge of Tomas de Berlanga, a Portuguese Franciscan monk who brought them to the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo from the Canary Islands in the year 1516. It wasn't long before the banana became popular throughout the Caribbean as well as Central America. Arabian slave traders are credited with giving the banana its popular name. The bananas that were growing in Africa as well as Southeast Asia were not the eight-to-twelve-inch giants that have become familiar in British supermarkets today. They were small, about as long as a man's finger, which explains the name 'banan', Arabic for finger.
It was almost four hundred years later that the British tasted the first bananas to arrive in their country, wrapped in tin foil. Instructions on how to eat a banana appeared in the Domestic Cyclopaedia of Practical Information and read as follows: "Bananas are eaten raw, either alone or cut in slices with sugar and cream, or wine and orange juice. They are also roasted, fried or boiled, and are made into fritters, preserves, and marmalades."
A Monkey banana fact: The banana plant is not a tree. It is actually the world's largest herb!
Growing Bananas
There are two main varieties of bananas, the fruit or sweet banana and the plantain. Though the banana plant has the appearance of a sort of palm tree, and is often called a banana palm, it is actually considered a herb. It dies back after each fruiting and produces new growth for the next generation of fruit. Bananas do not grow simply from seed. Man intervened long ago and crossed two varieties of African wild bananas and got rid of the many seeds that were an unpleasant presence, and improved the flavour and texture from hard and unappetizing to its present soft and irresistibly sweet flavour. My mouth waters at the thought...
In about nine months the plants reach their mature height of about 15 to 30 feet. Some varieties will grow to a height of 40 feet. From the stems, that are about 12 inches thick, flower shoots begin to produce bananas. If you have never seen bananas growing, you might be puzzled that they appear to be growing upside-down with their stems connected to the bunch at the bottom and the tips pointing upward.
There are approximately 300 species of bananas, but only 20 varieties are grown commercially, I am yet to try out every single variety.
Bananas are grown to brew beer in some areas of East Africa. Brazil and Kenya grow a unique fruit banana called the Apple Banana, the flavour of which is just like an apple. This special variety is only three to four inches in length. Another special variety is the Lady's Finger, an especially small banana with a sweet, creamy texture that grows in Thailand. You can recognize the Red Banana by its reddish brown skin. The flesh inside also has a reddish tinge, and the flavour is very sweet.
|
