Is a banana an herb or a fruit or vegetable?
Bananas are both a fruit and not a fruit. While the banana plant is colloquially called a banana tree, it’s actually an herb distantly related to ginger, since the plant has a succulent tree stem, instead of a wood one. The yellow thing you peel and eat is, in fact, a fruit because it contains the seeds of the plant.
Is a banana a berry or a tropical fruit?
Is Banana a Fruit? This might come as a surprise to most of you, but bananas are berries! Yes, you read that right! Berries! To fall under the category of fruit, it has to be the reproductive organ, containing seed structure.To be considered a berry, the ‘fruit’ has to be developed from a single ovary with a soft exocarp and fleshy mesocarp, with an endocarp containing one or more seeds.
Is the banana a fruit, herb, or berry?
According to Stanford University it’s not just that the banana plant is technically an herb — the banana fruit is also technically a berry. “True berries are simple fruits stemming from one flower with one ovary and typically have several seeds.”. A banana fits this definition from a botanical standpoint.
Does Banana have flowers or fruit?
There also may be neutered flowers. Bananas are classified as a berry, and the fruit actually comes from the female flowers, which, strangely enough, develop without pollination. The seeds of bananas are not fertile. The best method of propagation is division.
What fruit is under the berry subcategory?
Why is the word "fruit" used to describe bananas?
What are botanical berries?
What is a berry?
What are the two main categories of fruits?
What is the meaning of the word "fruit"?
What are the three structures that surround the seeds of a fruit?
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Is A Banana A Berry Or A Fruit? - Answers
it is neither it is a herb.It's a berry that grows on an herb.Alan Davidson, author of The Oxford Companion to Food, says the word herb at its broadest can mean, "a plant whose green parts ...
How do banana trees grow?
Banana trees grow from an underground root system called a corm , which can last for many years. Each corm sends up one or more shoots, which develop large leaves. The thick stalks of these leaves wrap around each other and thicken into the trunk of the banana “tree.” A central stem comes up through the leaf stalks and develops the banana “heart,” which is a structure that includes multiple small flowers, each of which has an ovary that develops into a banana. Once the bananas have ripened, the entire plant dies back to the ground, and the corm sends up a new shoot. Even though a banana plant can get to be over 7.5 meters tall (25 feet), it only lasts about a year or so. And the interior of it is not a structure of dead cells as with wood. So a banana “tree” is not technically a woody tree.
What is a fruit?
To a botanist a fruit is “… any ovary and its accessory parts that has developed and matured. It also usually contains seeds.” (From Introduction to Plant Biology, by Kingsley R. Stern) The ovary of a plant is part of the flower pistil. Most pistils are shaped like a vase, with a rounded bulb and a thin neck. The ovary would be the bulb. Once the pistil is fertilized with pollen, the seeds develop in the ovary and the ovary often becomes large and fleshy, like an apple or a peach. The botanist’s definition of fruit includes most of the things we usually think of as fruit, such as apples, peaches and berries. It would not include rhubarb, which is a plant stem and does not come from the ovary. It would also include some things people don’t typically think of as fruit, such as tomatoes, green beans, and avocados.
Where do bananas come from?
If a banana is a fruit, where are the seeds? Ah, interesting question. Bananas and plantains come from plants in the genus Musa, which is native to Southeast Asia. The commercially grown banana is a hybrid of at least two species, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. As with many hybrids, when M. acuminate and M. balbisiana combine, the pairing of chromosomes often goes awry, with the resulting hybrid offspring ending up with three sets of chromosomes, instead of the usual two. As is also often the case, the “triploid” hybrid is almost entirely sterile. Seeds rarely form. Which is nice for those of us who love the banana fruit. The picture here shows what a wild banana looks like and as you can see, it is full of fairly large seeds, which would spoil the fun of a banana split, I’m afraid.
What is considered a fruit?
Let’s deal with the easy one first. There are two ideas of what qualifies as a fruit. The culinary definition says any generally sweet plant parts are fruits. This includes all the things we typically think of as fruit, such as apples, pears, and berries of many kinds. It also usually includes things like rhubarb. And it definitely includes bananas.
Is banana a plant or a herb?
Therefore, to a botanist, banana is an herb. Your doctor is right about that. But from a botanist’s standpoint, whether something is an herb or not is about the plant, not the fruit. Many, if not most, herbs have fruit, including the banana tree.
Is a banana a fruit?
The botanist’s definition would most definitely include bananas, which are the developed ovaries of the banana plant. So by any definition I’m aware of, a banana is a fruit.
Is a spruce tree a tree?
Herbs include almost everything that isn’t considered to be a tree. It’s important to note that this is a descriptive term, not a taxonomic or evolutionary category. A spruce tree and a willow tree are clearly both woody trees, but they are not at all closely related. The willow is an angiosperm, a flowering plant, whereas the spruce is a gymnosperm. Most herbs are angiosperms, much more like the willow tree than they are like a spruce.
Why Don’t Bananas Contain Seeds?
That’s because wild bananas have seeds that are too large that it becomes hard (or impossible) to eat the fleshy parts.
Why Are Bananas Berries?
A berry has three layers: the outer skin called exocarp, the fleshy middle called mesocarp, and the innermost part that holds the seed called endocarp.
What type of banana do we eat?
The banana most of us consume today is the Cavendish type, which replaced the sweeter variety called Gros Michel when a fungal epidemic wiped it out. We have long seen and treated bananas as a fruit, but did you know other people regard it is a vegetable instead?
What is the difference between fruit and vegetable?
It contains the seed of the plant, making the means for a plant to get its seed out into the world. A vegetable is an herbaceous plant or the edible part of a plant. Herbaceous means the plant has a stem with little or no woody tissue, ...
Why are bananas so popular?
One of the reasons it’s popular is because of its flexibility and fantastic benefits. We eat it as is, we add it to savory meals, and we add it to desserts.
How do we propagate bananas?
We propagated them by cutting out the suckers growing out of the underground rhizome and then replanting them. These develop into mature plants that produce the same banana.
How many subcategories are there in bananas?
While we’re blowing your mind away with the truth about bananas, let’s further delve into its classification as a fruit. A fruit has nine subcategories: pome, drupe, aggregate fruit, legumes, nuts, berries, capsules, grains, and multiple fruits.
Why Is The Banana Crooked?
The banana grows on a perennial. Like every plant, it is oriented towards the sun. On the yearly, there are wreath-shaped flowers – on the so-called “tuft” – small flowers. A single banana will grow from each of these blossoms.
Are You Eating Banana Peel: Healthy Or Toxic?
In general, the banana is healthy – and whole. “Eating banana peel” sounds weird, but it isn’t. The shell is rich in nutrients that are good for your heart, immune, and nervous systems.
Can You Eat A Green (Unripe) Banana?
Green or yellow: bananas are healthy and easily digestible. The color of the banana peel only provides information about the degree of ripeness and the sugar content of the crooked fruit.
Do Ripe Bananas Have More Calories?
Is it sweet like sugar equals more calories? The banana bread only becomes delicious when the peel of the bananas is brown. If they are overripe, they contain the most sugar. So when they are in the last stage. Experts for the evil things distinguish between 4 levels of maturity. The other four are here in chronological order:
What fruit is under the berry subcategory?
Bananas aren’t the only surprising fruit to fall under the berry subcategory.
Why is the word "fruit" used to describe bananas?
That’s also why the word “fruit” is used to qualify most fruits, including bananas — instead of the name of the subcategory under which they fall. Summary. Fruits were named thousands of years before botanists came up with an official classification.
What are botanical berries?
Summary. Tomatoes, grapes, kiwis, avocados, peppers, eggplants and guavas are some other fruits that fulfill the requirements to be considered botanical berries. Yet, like bananas, they’re seldom thought of as such.
What is a berry?
Berries are a subcategory of fruits, the sweet, fleshy, seed-holding structures of a flowering plant.
What are the two main categories of fruits?
Fruits can be divided into two main categories: fleshy or dry ( 1 ). Dry fruits are foods we don’t typically think of as fruit, such as nuts, legumes and coconuts. On the other hand, fleshy fruits are the types we’re accustomed to — common fruits, such as apples, cherries and bananas.
What is the meaning of the word "fruit"?
The word fruit is used to describe the sweet, fleshy, seed-holding structures of a flowering plant.
What are the three structures that surround the seeds of a fruit?
What’s more, a fruit’s seeds are surrounded by three main structures: Exocarp: The skin or outer part of the fruit. Mesocarp: The flesh or middle part of the fruit. Endocarp: The Inner part that encloses the seed or seeds. The main characteristics of these structures further contribute to the fruit’s classification ( 1 ).
