If you're the type to wonder about such things, you may have noticed that the bananas you buy at the store seem to contain no seeds. If that's the case, how does the banana tree reproduce? Well, it turns out the bananas do have seeds (of a sort) but they aren't used for reproduction.

Banana Seeds

If you went out into the wild and opened a banana fruit, you would probably find seeds. Some, in fact, are large and take up much of the fruit, making the flesh hard to eat. Our commercial bananas (which are, for the most part, the Cavendish variety) have been specially bred over the years so that they are seedless triploids that do not form mature seeds. If you've noticed little black dots in the middle of the banana, you've discovered immature seeds that won't develop, which happens with triploids.

Illustration: The Spruce / Maritsa Patrinos

Tasty Mutant

The banana is actually a type of plantain. Those of the sweet variety that we usually peel and eat raw are often called "dessert" bananas, owing to their sweetness and general snackability. What we call "plantains" simply have that popular name to distinguish them as the large varieties that are typically cooked before eating. Yummy, yellow dessert bananas are bred from mutant strains of banana plants that happened to produce fruit without useful seeds. Banana plants are cultivated by removing rhizomes from host plants and replanting the samples to grow on their own. With this method, one plant can become the "mother" of an entire plantation made up of genetically identical plants.

Talking About Bananas

The next time you need to impress someone, peel off these terms to show your banana brain.

Finger—an individual banana fruit

Hand—a group of bananas, which can number up to 20

Bunch—a cluster of banana hands; also called a banana stem

Pulp—the part of the banana you eat

Epidermis—banana peel; you can eat these, too, cooked or raw

Phloem—the "strings" on banana fruit

Musa—the banana genus; or Musa sapientum, if you want to be specific

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