Fruit Development

Fruit Development
Banana varieties which produce fruit of commercial use are parthenocarpic. They are propagated by rhizome.

The leaves originate from a meristematic region located at the apex of the rhizome at about the level of the surface. The leaves are built by cell division of marginal meristems and emerge in sequence.

After the first leave expands, subsequent leaves emerge through the center of the previous leaf sheath.

The overlapping and tightly packed leaf sheaths from pseudostem of the banana plant. After about 9 months of growth there is a switchover from vegetative to reproductive phase.

The central zone of the apical stem springs into activity and rapidly produces a succession of bracts and flower primordial.

Then, as the true stem elongates, the floral apex is forced up the inside of the pseudostem and eventually emerges from the top of the pseudostem.

The inflorescene consist of many groups of flowers, each subtended and covered by a bract.

About 6-15 floral bracts each containing 15-20 female flowers are produced. The bracts drop off in a few days, leaving the female flowers to develop into horticultural mature fruit in the next 90-150 days.

The fruit consist of outer cuticle and epidermis, several layers of hypodermal parenchyma and abroad region of parenchyma cells interspersed with latex vessels, vascular bundles and air spaces.

The hypodermal cells and innermost initialing cells end to be smaller and more tightly packed than the rest of the cells.

The banana fruit has a relatively large proportion of peel tissue, which makes up about 80, 40 and 33% of the fresh weight of juvenile, mature and fully ripe fruits, respectively.
Fruit Development

Healthy Fruit: Banana

Healthy Fruit: Banana
Bananas are considered cold and have a tendency to move energy inward in the body. They are sweet, being rich in carbohydrates (mostly the sugars glucose and fructose), as well as in folic acid, vitamins B6, and C, potassium, and pectin. They also contain an enzyme that aids in the production of sex hormones. As bananas are high in calories but low in fat, they are an excellent food for pregnant mothers, babies and children.

Bananas provide long term energy and improve stamina. They moisten the ‘yin’ fluid of the body, including the lungs and large intestines, and have some antiseptic activity. They support the friendly intestinal flora (helpful bacteria within our bowel) and stimulate the proliferation of cells that provide a protective coating between the stomach and harsh digestive acids. Bananas also stimulate the production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that improve sleep and elevate mood.

Bananas have been used to treat alcoholism, arteriosclerosis, celiac disease, colitis, constipation, depression, diarrhea, dyspepsia, exhaustion, hemorrhoids, hypertension, weak muscle and ulcers. They also have been used to help treat insulin shock in diabetics. Ripe bananas are very easy to digest – even easier when mashed – and are recommended for those suffering from weak digestion, vomiting or emaciation.
Healthy Fruit: Banana

Banana Tree

Banana Tree
The banana tree is not actually a tree at all, but a herb, a giant herb, and even more extraordinary than the pineapple. It sprouts from a rhizome and can reach a height of nine meters, growing very rapidly, and the process takes only a year. The leaves emerge one above another, passing up through the tube formed by the older leaf stems. When the last has grown, an inflorescence forms at the base of the banana and mounts the stem too, eventually emerging at the axis and drooping towards the ground, Each groups of flower, borne like a crown around the stem, becomes a bunch of ‘hand’ of banana. No fertilization takes place, and the flowers are sterile.

For this reason Buddha made banana plant the symbol of the futility of earthly possessions. Classic Chinese iconography shows him meditating on this key to wisdom at the foot of a banana tree.

A banana plant produces only a bunch or ‘hand’ in its life, but a bunch may comprise from 100 to 400 bananas. Then it dies. The banana plant which comes up next time grows from the rhizome, and plant with pieces of rhizomes or cuttings of spontaneous shoots. The banana looks as if it had landed on earth from another world: a tree which is really a herb, ‘flowers’ and ‘fruit’ which are so called for lack of any real way to define them by normal terrestrial standards.
Banana Tree